We like old pictures, so here are some from 65 years ago today.









Can anybody explain the flag in the last picture?

From Wikipedia:
During the surrender ceremony, the deck of Missouri was decorated with a 31-star American flag that had been taken ashore by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 after his squadron of "Black Ships" sailed into Tokyo Bay to urge the opening of Japan's ports to foreign trade. This flag was actually displayed with the reverse side showing, i.e., stars in the upper right corner: the historic flag was so fragile that the conservator at the Naval Academy Museum had sewn a protective linen backing to one side to help secure the fabric from deteriorating, leaving its "wrong side" visible. The flag was displayed in a wood-framed case secured to the bulkhead overlooking the surrender ceremony

Seven and a half weeks later, I turned four and a few months after that, my dad came home from the Philippines and resumed the civilian life he had left in early 1941.

Sometime in early 1946, my parents took me to a restaurant. I had to use the rest room, so my dad took me. That was the first time I had been in a men's room and I had never seen a urinal before. I'm told I asked him in a loud voice what it was...

Thanks so much Steve. WOW ! In color too !
My dad was in WWII - Navy in the Pacific. He was off shore at Iwo Jima when they raised the flag.
Late in the war, his ship was hit by a kami kazi but managed to limp home. He was in a movie theater when the Japanese surrendered. When the movie was over, my dad came out to screaming crowds in the street. Turns out the owner of the theatre didn't want to refund the ticket fees and stop the movie ! So he let it run ! Thanks again.

Great pictures!
Great achievement!
I am a WWII buff for personal reasons.
Me, being a kid to you, only can tell you that my family is forever in debt to you for helping the world in those days.

We lost family members in concentration camps and if the wheels had turned the other way, my family nor me nor my daughters would be alive today.

When my children are old enough I have to take them on tour to all the WWII key places in Europe including Concentration Camps.

Sorry for the emotional post.

My dad was there that day. He wasn't on the USS Mossouri, but a cruiser anchored in Tokyo Bay. He served on 3 ships during the war, the old USS Idaho (an old battleship from WWI as I understand it), a cruiser I can't remember the name of, and the USS Topeka, which I think is the one present at the signing of the surrender. (I didn't make my appearance until nearly 2 1/2 years later.)

GREAT photos!! Thanks Steve!!

My Dad was in the 1st Marine Division, 1st Amphibious Tractor Battalion. He was on Peleliu, and the invasion of Okinawa and several little Island hopping campaigns.

I don't remember him saying where he was when the war ended but He said many times how glad he was when It was over. He spoke many times of the dead starving children.

He said before they dropped the "Big Bomb", White airplanes flew over and droped leaflets that said "Surrender or be wiped off the face of the earth". I asked him if the Japanese believed it and he said "Hell no, we didn't even believe it". He said "We all thought, If they had anything to end this war why didn't they use it".

My Dad and his ship, the USS Salamaua CVE-96 were there as well. They provided air cover for the surrender ceremonies. His ship was hit by a kamikase in January, limped home to the West Coast for repairs and made it back to the Pacific to go through the June typhoon.

For some reason, his captain headed directly into the typhoon. When they hit the storm, there was green water over the flight deck. A sea-going tug was stationed on their rear quarter at the beginning. After a rough night, they came out of the storm and could see the tug was still there as though nothing unusual happened, keeping station. My Dad's ship lost 60 feet of the front of the flight deck and several of the forward 40mm mounts.

Forgot to ad. Thanks Steve for these great color photo's. It was a great day and a new beginning.

We have a member of our Dutch community here in St Louis who is now 87. He was born and grew up in what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. He turned 18 in August of 1941 and in December, after Pearl Harbor, everyone above 18 was drafted. When the Indies fell to the Japanese, he became a POW and was shipped to one of the Fukuoka POW camps in Japan. His was on the outskirts of Nagasaki and the POW's were put to work in the Mitsubishi Shipyards. By August of 1945, the Japanese economy was in tatters and no work was being done, but the prisoners still had to go to the shipyard every day and do busywork like sweeping, etc. One day in August, a couple of his buddies outside called to him, "Paul, come out and take a look at this. There's a plane flying over and they've dropped some kind of a parachute!" He didn't like it, so he crawled under a heavy piece of machinery and put his hands over his face. He saw the flash through his hands. He survived (even walked around Nagasaki for a few weeks after the bomb fell). His camp was liberated by U.S. Marines. He's still in pretty good physical health.

If you go here and do a Ctrl-F (Find) for "brookman," you'll find some of his story.

http://www.angelfire.com/un/cwp/cwp-html/WWII-bk.html

Thanks for the pictures, Steve.

My Dad served as Radio Technician on the battleship New Jersey. Although I don't believe he was ever engaged in battle, he never talked about his navy experience.

Dad has been gone for 13 years now, but I still called Mom yesteday to wish her a Happy 60th Anniversary. Sept, 1 1950.

I posted this on my Facebook page Aug 14th....Today is VJ Day, victory over Japan 8-14-45. I didn't see anything about it in our local paper this morning. Victory over Japan ended WWII and the hellish island campaigns in the Pacific. Over sixty million people perished in the flames of WWII, millions more were spared by the handy work of the Enola Gay and Bockscar pilots and crews God bless the men and women that gave their young lives that we may live in a free nation. Today would also have been my dads 104th birthday, he died on his 81st birthday 23 years ago. Dad was the XO of Acorn 52, a land based Navy unit that built runways when islands were taken in the Pacific. He spent VJ Day on Palawan awaiting orders to invade Japan, they accepted the Japanese surrender on Truk in the Caroline Islands on Sept 2nd instead.

My wife's uncle Manuel was aboard the Mighty Mo that day in Tokyo harbor. He loved to tell the story of having witnessed history. Great pictures! God bless America.
Erik

I wonder how many of us have used a pen and ink like Commander Sanders is using in the picture.

Alas my dad was lost in the Hurtgen Forrest in Germany in October of '44. I am sure proud of him but it still makes me sad to have missed out on giving him a ride in my T. I was only 1 when he was MIA. He came home much later in the early 50's to not much fan fare since the war was well over by then. My mom is 90 and in a nursing home. I think she is looking forward to being reunited with him and in truth it makes my own mortality not so hard to contemplate since I will get to finally meet him.

I hadn't noticed the pen Steve, folks today pay top dollar for that type of pen. I remember him using them in the 60's. Thanks for posting your photos, those moments in time helped shape our world today... I would love to have seen that.

Land of the Free and most definitely Home of the Brave ......

Mario

Your emotion(s) are certainly well founded, to say the least. And what you are considering doing regarding the children would be a wonderful Mitzvah; a good deed.

Take care, Kid .....

Harvey

John Berch. Since your Dad was at both Peleliu and Okinawa, you MUST read "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa", by Eugene Sledge. A Marine who was there. It details those horrific campaigns from the point of view of the Marines who did the dirty work. You won,t soon forget it and after reading will understand why, after 65 years, with the memories still seared in their brains, the old veterans still cannot bring themselves to talk about the horrors they witnessed or the things they did to a ruthless enemy to survive, defeat and annihilate him in hand to hand combat, close up and personal. Semper Fi. Jim Patrick

Mario, I agree with Harvey. Was your family in Spain at that time, or elsewhere in Europe?

Both grandparents had the "vision" to leave
From my fatherīs side, they leave Berlin in 1934, but came back to visit their relatives in 1936, when the olimpics were going; as a matter of fact my father was in the stadium when Jesse Owens won and Hitler, who personaly used to congratulate every winner, got up and went out in order to avoid giving him his hand, he used to remember that . They travel to America and settle first in Ecuador and later in Venezuela.
From my motherīs side, they leave Paris and travel to Spain (but Franco was there), to Portugal and settle for some years in Tangier, then to Venezuela where both my parents met and my brother, sister and me were born.

Most of the family they leave behind, was killed.

Another anecdote, my father being 22 y.o. tried and emigrate from Ecuador to the USA, to NYC and he lived there for more than a year, he was drafted becuase the berlin airlift but never mobilized, things later did not went good for him and he went back to Ecuador, but a friend who he was living there went to Corea in 1950.

And now I live in the corner of europe almost in the middle of the atlantic.

There is a film taken at the Berlin Olympics that was banned by the Nazi's of Hitler sitting in the stands, surrounded by his henchman, rocking to an fro. Evidence, Psychoanalysists say, of Hitlers mental imbalance. I've seen it and it is disturbing, especially in light of his later crimes against humanity. Jim Patrick

I think that you do not have to be a psychoanalysit to know that he was a psycho....

Now, but in 1936, before he was able to realize his dreams of racial purity through genocide and world domination, he was universally loved by the German people and was considered the greatest German leader to have ever lived. The film I referred to was a preview of things to come. Jim Patrick

We watched "Germans in America" last night, and Hitler was not universally loved by the German people. They profiled one young man who refused to join the Nazi party, and he fled for his life. Jews, Gypsies and many others were German people who hated him.

rdr

My uncle was a director of foreign affairs in a Deutche Bank, who hated Hitler. He had a son who was euthanized when he was born because of a birth defect.

Later, during the war, he was conscripted into service as an interpreter in a military prison camp. As the war was ending a prisoner, a British officer, asked permission to see my uncle. He came into his office carrying a small box, and told my uncle the Russions will be in camp this afternoon and were killing all Germans they could find. The officer suggested my uncle leave now and get on the next train to Berlin.

With that the officer opened the box and produced a train ticket and some travel papers and handed them to my uncle.

My uncle lived to die at age 93, still hating Hitler

Freemasons didn't fare too well under Hitler either. The Grand Master of the Dutch Grand Lodge died in a concentration camp, and I translated the 1940 instructions to the occupation troops for the destruction of Masonic lodges and their contents for a magazine article once.

Bill. He was a very lucky man to have survived his experiences. With the Allied squadrons of marauding P-51 Mustangs dominating the skies over Germany during the time the Russians were advancing on Germany from the east, I doubt that your Uncle would have been much safer on a train, but he apparently made the right choice and lived to tell about it.

It was probably his kindness and compassion toward the allied prisoners that saved his life by causing that British Officer to share his knowledge of the Russian advance, probably heard on a secret shortwave radio. And the ticket? Probably printed on a secret printing press used to make documents for escaping prisoners. Jim Patrick

Jim,

I suppose that is the way it was. When my uncle ws telling me the story, he added that the officer also gave him a map of the area and a compass in case something went wrong with the train.

My uncle was supposed to read and censor the prisoner's mail for anti Nazi stuff or complaints, but especially at the end of war, he was the only German in the camp who could read English. He said he let some of the prisoners know to put in some gibberish, so he could always snip something out of their mail.

It was quite a story he told me.

Bob from Australia kindly sent me this link. It reminds me of how grateful I need to be to so many who gave so much. Be sure your speakers are turned on as the fist few words make it even more meaningful. http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=KTb6qdPu8JE

Gratefully submitted,

Hap l9l5 Model T Ford touring cut of and made into a pickup truck and l907 Model S Runabout. Sumter SC.

To Mario and anyone else on the forum to whom it applies today: L'shona tova!

Stood on that spot myself on the Mo' on a Hawaii visit some 5 yrs. ago. Pretty quiet on board that day. Brass plate on deck marks the spot. Still brings the emotions up.

Thanks Dick.

Hap.

Thank you. That one put a lump in my throat and brought a tear to my eye. I passed it along to all my old Marine Corps. buddies, family and like minded friends to forward. I entitled it "Thank a veteran". Please everyone. Pass it along. It says alot to those who need to know they are appreciated for all they are doing and for all they did.

Semper Fi.

Jim Patrick