On the 75th anniversary of the official end of World War II, wartime veterans in Hawaii recalled their relief that the fighting was finally over, as today’s military leaders contrasted the world order that emerged with a new Asian challenge — China — arising as a security concern.
The commemoration Wednesday on the fantail of the battleship Missouri — the site of Japan’s unconditional surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay — featured 12 local World War II veterans and comments by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, among others.
“It is because of your selfless service and your sacrifice that we live in peace and prosperity today,” Esper told the Hawaii veterans.
PHOTOS: World War II veterans from Hawaii mark the 75th anniversary of war’s end
He added that the Missouri, “which was built for war, has since been dedicated to peace and reconciliation,” resting in the very harbor where more than 2,400 Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice on Dec. 7, 1941.
The Japanese attack ushered America into World War II.
Throughout the war, “millions of our countrymen answered our nation’s call with great courage,” Esper said during the ceremony that was sparsely attended due to coronavirus concerns but livestreamed around the world.
Just several dozen veterans and dignitaries were on the battleship for the event.
“Americans of all faiths, races and ethnicities, from all walks of life and vocation, rich to poor, and from all corners of the country, from cities to suburbs to farms” left loved ones to join allies in a desperate fight for liberty, Esper said.
Today’s rising threat from China was not far behind in comments by Esper and Adm. Phil Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on Oahu.
Sept. 2, 1945, was the day the United States and its allies “turned tragedy into triumph, violence into victory, fighting into freedom, loss into liberty and peril into peace,” Davidson said.
It was also the beginning of the so-called “rules-based international order” led by America and based on free trade and open seas.
Today, “the world faces great challenges,” Davidson said, and one is an emboldened Communist Party of China that “seeks to change the world to one in which Chinese national power is more important than international law.”
Esper noted that the war’s outcome reshaped the international order to one “led by like-minded nations, grounded in common purpose and and shared values.”
Although he didn’t mention China by name, Esper talked of the changing landscape and offered a warning.
After the war, “we built relationships with like-minded nations based on reciprocal trade, not predatory economics, based on respect for the sovereignty of all countries, not a strategy of might makes right,” he said.
Esper said the United States and partners for decades “have based our efforts on the belief that today’s free and open order, however imperfect, is worth fighting for.”
Mike Carr, president and CEO of the USS Missouri Memorial Association, said the ceremony aboard the battleship in 1945 was preceded by a Pacific war that raged for nearly four years and saw a series of “epic, ferocious, brutal battles on land, at sea and in the air.”
He recounted the day Japan’s leaders were aboard the Missouri to sign an unconditional surrender.
“Sept. 2, 1945, it was a cloudy, dreary morning in Tokyo Bay — perfect weather for such a somber ceremony,” Carr said. “More than 250 allied warships encircled the Missouri with over 900 fighters and bombers in the air.”
A small air armada of at least a dozen vintage fighters and bombers shipped to Oahu for Wednesday’s ceremony conducted a flyover.
Just after 8:30 a.m., a B-25 bomber and a P-51 Mustang arced over the starboard side of the Missouri in Pearl Harbor in a tight formation, followed quickly by another Mustang.
A TBM Avenger torpedo bomber, several T-6 Texans and two PBY Catalina flying boats were among warbirds that also made a pass.
The coronavirus pandemic reduced the commemoration in Hawaii to local World War II veterans, and two warbird aerial parades over the weekend and in Wednesday’s ceremony.
Planned trips by 46 wartime veterans and an equal number of companions from the mainland to Oahu were canceled due to COVID-19. So were commemoration dinners, a warbird open house, a documentary movie premiere and a parade.
Ted Richardson, a 95-year-old Waikiki resident who served in the Marine Corps at Guadalcanal, was asked what job he did in the island assault.
“Tried to stay alive,” he answered as he headed to the Missouri for the ceremony. “We weren’t very prepared to land on Guadalcanal.”
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8 and launched 1.6 million troops against the Japanese army. On Aug. 10, Japan offered to surrender to the Allies.
Jack DeTour, a B-25 bomber pilot on Okinawa in 1945, recalls word spreading at his airfield that the Japanese had surrendered — and the fusillade of celebratory fire that followed.
“Every type gun” was firing, DeTour said. “The big guns. The small guns.”
It wasn’t confirmed until the next day — after DeTour was assigned another combat mission, his last against Japan.
If America had invaded Japan’s home islands, DeTour, now 97, wonders if he’d still be alive. He was one of the 12 wartime veterans on the Missouri.
“We were very, very happy because we knew if we went into the cities, they would really get a lot more of us than they had been getting,” DeTour said of the war ending.
Lambert Wai remembers celebrations in the streets of Honolulu when word came of the surrender.
“When they got the word, there were so many screams going up,” the 99-year-old Army veteran said. “So many parties going on. People yelling. People jumping in the streets. It was amazing.”
Those who lived through it knew the horror of war, he said.
Wai certainly did. His brother, Army Capt. Francis Wai, was killed rallying fellow soldiers against waiting Japanese forces in the invasion of Leyte in the Philippines in 1944. Francis Wai eventually received the Medal of Honor posthumously.
The surrender ceremony on Sept. 2, 1945, officially ended the deadliest conflict in the history of mankind. Somewhere between 50 million and 80 million people died.
With more than 2,000 sailors and Marines jammed aboard the Missouri, Gen. Douglas MacArthur proclaimed: “It is our earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish — for freedom, tolerance and justice.”
