Tag Archives: VJ Day

national news

Two dates coincide historically

For the life of me I never gave this issue a first thought — let alone a second one.

Aug. 9 is important for two unique reasons, yet they both occupy huge spots in our nation’s history.

On that date in 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force dropped the second of two atomic bombs, this one on Nagasaki, Japan. The first one exploded over Hiroshima, Japan, three days earlier, President Truman wanted to send a message to our remaining World War II enemy that further resistance was futile and could be a very deadly to the Japanese.

Give ‘Em Hell Harry ordered the second bonbing and … well, there you have it. Japan waved the white flag five days later and the street dances commenced all across our nation as we celebrated VJ Day.

The world never would be the same.

Twenty-nine years later, on that date in 1974, President Nixon quit the office to which he was re-elected in a historic landslide just two years earlier. In June 1972, some doofus burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in D.C.; they rifled through some desk drawers, looking for dirt on the Dems.

If there was a more stupid political stunt ever conceived, you would have to explain it to me. Nixon was cruising to his huge victory, yet the Committee to Re-Elect the President, aka CREEP, just had to break the law.

Nixon got into trouble by covering up the crime when he ordered the CIA to intervene on his behalf. The House of Representatives then would prepare articles of impeachment against him. An impeachment was a done deal; so was a Senate trial conviction.

Nixon got the word from his Republican allies in the Senate that he was toast.

So … he resigned, becoming the first POTUS ever to leave office in this shameful manner.

Both of these events stand alone as monumental episodes in our nation’s long and complicated history.

Let’s not allow either of them to repeat themselves.

International news

Auschwitz liberation turns 70

This still-new year has just welcomed the first of many 70-year anniversaries, most of which are related to the Second World War.

It was 70 years ago this week that the Red Army, which was storming across eastern Europe on its way to Berlin, liberated the Auschwitz death camp, where the Nazi monsters exterminated thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, while pursuing what Adolf Hitler called “the final solution.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11368740/Holocaust-Memorial-Day-remembering-horror-of-Auschwitz-70-years-on.html

Other death camps would be liberated by the Soviets — and by American, British and Allied forces rolling toward Berlin from the west. They would uncover horrors never imagined.

The world will spend a good bit of time this year looking back on the final chapter of the world’s most destructive conflict.

Seventy years ago this year:

* Hitler died, taking his own life to avoid being captured by the Soviet army. Good riddance to that hideous monster.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt died. For many Americans alive at the time, he was the only president they knew. He helped rescue the nation from the depths of depression and then led it into battle against tyranny.

* The Manhattan Project brought us the atomic bomb, which FDR’s successor, President Truman, ordered dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ll have much more to say about that at a later time.

* The Allies declared Victory in Europe, and the world celebrated VE Day, as Nazi Germany surrendered.

* The Japanese surrendered later and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur accepted their surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

* The United Nations was founded in San Francisco.

Nineteen forty-five was a monumental year, yes?

World War II ended and the world began picking up the pieces of its shattered existence.