Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were put in place rapidly in 1945. When the year opened, General MacArthur was named Commander of the Allied forces in the Pacific. On January twentieth Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated President for a fourth term--the first and last time such a thing would happen. The American public, still thoroughly backing its fighting service people, was war weary. Often when a customer complained because an advertised product had been sold out, the grumbled response would be "Don't you know there's a war on?" The European situation was much improved but in the Pacific the war raged furiously and rage is the word to describe the accelerating violence in the entire region. Kamikazes, suicide bombers, were attacking Allied ships and imagined to be shouting Banzai!" as they did so. On the Allied side, the Burna Road had been re-opened so war supplies were once more being brought into the China theater. We would win. We had to.
In February FDR traveled to Yalta, the Crimean resort on the Black Sea.
Here he conferred with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. His picture with the group came as a shock to us.
He looked frail, ill, and tired--particularly so beside the robust Churchill. The U.S. public was mostly very pro-Winston whose mother was, after all, an American. Stalin was something else. He was a valuable ally but he and the Soviets were viewed with suspicion and distrust. People were not overly pleased to see their president in such close association with him. From Yalta FDR traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. When he came home, he went to Warm Springs, Georgia for a rest. On April twelfth he died there. Lucy Mercer, his long-time love, was with him. It was rumored that Mrs. Roosevelt was aware of it but did not object. She must have known that her husband was dying. The strong, generous-hearted woman would not be one to deny comfort. While the nation was reeling from shock, a shaken Harry Truman was sworn in as its thirty-fifth President. At first there were doubts about this little known man's ability to handle the huge job ahead but Truman soon proved to be a firm, no-nonsense leader. When he said "The buck stops here", he meant it.
Two weeks after FDR's death the Allies forced Germany's unconditional surrender. Hitler, hiding like the cornered rat he was, unable to face due punishment, took the coward's way out and shot himself. His aide Goering also committed suicide but another, Himmler, was captured and later executed for his war crimes. In Italy, ten days after Hitler's death, Il Duce--Mussolini--was arrested and executed with his mistress, Clara Petacci. Afterward the outraged Italian populace took a medieval revenge on the man who had brought them into the war. We read that the pair were stripped naked and hung upside down in a public square.
In the Pacific the heavily fortified Japanese island, Iwo Jima, was captured after weeks of furious fighting. The photo of U.S. Marines triumphantly raising the flag there is one of the most memorable pictures of the war.
Naval battles were ferocious. Planes from aircraft carriers attacked warships. Kamikazes dropped bombs and blew up others. We were winning though. We read that the Philippines were again under U.S. control (More exotic names--the Gulf of Leyte, Mindanao). "I shall return," MacArthur had said and he was back at Corregidor.
Backstage, behind the scenes of this tremendous, on-going drama, ordinary life went on, attuned to and mostly colored by the war. There were songs--"Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition", the words of a "sky pilot" (chaplain) at Pearl Harbor, and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me". People still talked about "Forever Amber", the delightfully naughty book that had created a sensation last year. We were the lucky owners of a Bendix washing machine, one of the last in the area, the dealer said. Bendix and other appliance companies were making war materials now. The machine opened in front instead of at the top. On a warm spring morning our almost-three-year old daughter pulled open the door--a no-no and she knew it--while the machine was operating. I hastily rescued the small sinner, plunked her down in her crib, and dashed back to mop up. The flood waters had run under the back door and down the steps. Six precious ration stamps, put out for the milkman were disintegrating in a puddle of wash water. Our diet now included canned codfish cakes and I rather liked them. one day at the market the only meat was liverwurst. In desperation, I bought a couple of large slices and fried them for dinner. This was not a great success.
In late July rumors grew that the mysterious weapon would soon be used. On the twenty-eighth the giant cruiser INDIANAPOLIS was sunk by a Japanese submarine. More than eight hundred lives were lost. Nine days later, on August sixth, after President Truman had signed the order to do so, the pilot of the Enola Gay flew over Hiroshim and loosed its murderous cargo. on the city. On August ninth Nagasaki was devastated by a second atomic bomb. The question of the morality of this drastic action will probably never be answered. As always, the innocents paid the price. It was a terrible, an horrific one but it ended the nightmare of war.
On August fourteenth, I had been reading to the girls and was about to put the baby down for his nap. We were all together when Patrick came home early from the office with the news that the Japanese had surrendered unconditionally. It's been more than sixty-four years since that day but I can never forget that moment. All I could say was "Do you mean it's over? Really OVER?" And he said yes.