Seventy years ago Saturday, World War II ended with the surrender of Japan. The other day I said to a middle-aged friend, “Saturday is V-J Day.” She replied, “What’s V-J Day?”
Seventy years ago Saturday, World War II ended with the surrender of Japan. The other day I said to a middle-aged friend, “Saturday is V-J Day.” She replied, “What’s V-J Day?” It was hard for me to believe that anyone in this country doesn’t know what V-J Day means. Certainly everyone old enough to visit an art gallery has seen the iconic photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt of the sailor kissing the girl in the middle of the celebrating crowd in Times Square on August 15, 1945.
I remember that day clearly — where I was and what I felt when I heard the announcement of the war’s end. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Brown University. I was on a youth hostel bike trip in Wyoming, R.I., and I can still feel the frustration at having no one to celebrate with.
My home was in Crestwood, N.Y., a 30-minute train ride to New York city, where on that day confetti was falling from the tallest buildings and celebrants were dancing with and kissing strangers. A week before — or a week afterward — I would have been in that crowd, maybe not kissing strangers, but certainly the right age to take in and participate in all the happy excitement. I had turned 19 in April; the war started when I was 15.
I walked along a dirt road in rural Rhode Island, crying with joy and anger that I was missing the big moment. It would be all over by the time I got home, and I knew I had missed what would have been one of the biggest moments of my life.
My husband, who died in January 2012 at the age of 91, was a Navy fighter pilot in the Pacific during World War II. When his mind grew a little fuzzy with age, he had no vivid memory of that day, but he remembered that he was on an aircraft carrier, probably the Rudyerd Bay in the South Pacific. I didn’t meet him until 1946, when the veterans came pouring back into the United States to take up their lives after a three-and-a-half-year interruption. Two unlikely characters met in a class in English literature and married the next year.
Johnny had been living in Windemere from 2008 until 2012 when he died of a stroke, and when he moved into the nursing home it had been a big change in our lives. Statistics tell us that more than a thousand veterans of that great war are dying every day. Although I lived with him for 61 years and then talked to him on the phone several times a day, and saw him three or four times a week, I do not know much about his experiences in that war. Other relatives of veterans tell me the same thing — members of his generation didn’t talk about their war experiences — just the facts, maybe, but not the feelings.
One morning in 2010 I went to visit Johnny at Windemere just as he was getting ready to go downstairs to listen to Dorothy Bangs, a wonderful lady who came in to entertain the residents several times a week, singing to the accompaniment of her piano. Dorothy and I were both probably older than many of the people she was entertaining. In fact, we both had our second babies the same day in 1951; she was the music teacher in the Tisbury School when my children went there. She was a regular entertainer at Windemere and played for them several times a week.
But on that day she brought in a friend of hers, a popular pianist, to play for the elderly group. David Crohan, who is blind, can play anything on a keyboard — from Bach to Scott Joplin. He and my granddaughter, Katie Ann, have been in several concerts together, and he knew that Katie’s grandfather was in the audience. I decided to stay and listen to this unexpected concert. When between songs I reminded him that this was V-J Day, and that Johnny had been a Navy fighter pilot in the South Pacific in World War II, he played Anchors Aweigh and then a medley from South Pacific. I was pretty teared up by the end of his performance — anytime musical performers visit Windemere, they generally focus on music of the forties, which for many of us is the best and most familiar music ever written.
At the end of his mini-concert, David wanted to be led around to every resident so he could greet each one and shake his or her hand.
It always moved me to watch the otherwise passive and disabled elderly, many with their eyes closed, and some asleep, react with a tapping foot or a nodding head in time to the music. I weep easily to the tunes of Glen Miller and Harry James, as they are listened to by the people who used to dance to them. And listening to the music of the World War II Armed Services will forever bring tears to my eyes.
I will always remember that day.
Shirley W. Mayhew lives in West Tisbury.
Comments
I found Mrs Mayhew's article
David Whitmon Oak BluffsI found Mrs Mayhew's article most moving.
Though born in 1953, WW II is in a sense a part of my life. My father an American GI and my mother an Air Raid Warden in London England throughout the War, but for the War I would not be here.
We should never forget what WW II was about, what it was to us as a people,
Dear Shirley,
Douglas Kiorves Always on IslAndDear Shirley,
I posted on Facebook your extremely poignant article on VJ Day - lest we all forget.
I was born in 1946, as were Vineyard visitors Bill Clinton and David Letterman. What my generation never forgets is that love, respect and dedication that our parents lived everyday for this country while they prayed that a cloud that moved in on Dec 17, 1941, would ever clear to bring this country, another blue-sky "Vineyard Day". My father passed in 2012 just short of 91.
I sat with him one Vineyard Day in my brother-in-law's garden on the corner of Main and Pease Point Way and he talked about being in Coast Guard where he put together convoys and assigned individuals and friends to convoy escort duty.
He spoke of one fellow chief who pleaded to get him in the action - which he himself wanted but his superiors wanted him at his Remmington. He lamented that that convoy was attacked and that destroyer escort was torpedoed just East of the Vineyard as was his friend. He told me how unduly, he was happy the War ended and to be in New York City with all the joy. It did not ease the pain of all the people he assigned to those convoys. He might as well been on a dirt road back in South Dakota (or Rhode Island).
I like to tell people that Chief Korves and his Irish Bride, Patty O'Connor, met and danced to Dorsey at USO party in 1941 and that they celebrated wildly on the first St Patty's Day after the war when I was conceived exactly 9 months before.
Lest we forget Johnny, Shirley, Patty and Cork.
Thank you so much, Doug, for
Shirley West TisburyThank you so much, Doug, for your articulate appreciation,,,,,
Love it ...
DebbieLove it ...
Thanks Shirley. History &
ed grazda chilmarkThanks Shirley. History & memories are important.
Poignant- and it brought back
Connie Ellis New York and ChilmarkPoignant- and it brought back memories of where I was on V-JDay, at a summer camp at age 11. We had been told about
The A Bomb and Hiroshima and Nagasaki during a sunset cook-out. The vision of a red sky has remained my vision of the
destructive chaos of nuclear weapons. The V-J news seemed almost anticlimactic to a youngster like me. But to Shirley
and John, it was the reprieve and new start to their life together. Thanks for the memory, Shirley.
I'll always remember my
Hugh Weisman Chilmark and New York CityI'll always remember my parents taking my brother and I out on the street of our suburban New York neighborhood one warm August evening with sticks and pans from the kitchen and adding to the din coming from everyone.
My Aunt Jean Gilluly's memory
Stephanie EdgartownMy Aunt Jean Gilluly's memory of V-J day ( when she 7 ) was she and her grandmother Elaie Maud Shurtleff Norton were picking corn in her grandfather Orin Norton's corn field, (near where the Edgartown Golf Club is) They heard quite a commotion coming from town. Guns being fired, all the church bells ringing. They walked into town and witnessed impromptu parades of people hooting and hollering, and more guns and horns blasting. People took turns ringing the the bell at the Methodist church. A photo of her and her sister, Roberta, and her grandmother and her sister, Mabel Boylston ringing the bell was printed in the Vineyard Gazette that week.
I Stephanie - I rented a room
Shirley WTI Stephanie - I rented a room from Mabel Boyston in 1946 - or 1947 - when I was waitressing at the Edgartown Café, now The Wharf......
V-J Day...Memories yes..we
Lucia Giuttari New Meadows, N.J.V-J Day...Memories yes..we had the radio and the Paramount Theater in NYC to get tickets to see & hear Benny Goodman, the young sensation, Mr. Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra (my sister & I shared a bedroom..her poster of Frank covered an entire wall)& the big bands we were glued to Saturday Night's Bandstand on radio as we listened to our favorites (I still have records of the great bands and crooners and a player to listen to them). Our grandmother Lucia, a lot of fun, came with us to see and hear Sinatra. The screaming girls were wild & there were NYC police on horseback to keep us in line. Grandmother on line so long stepped out to use the ladies' room & when she tried to get back in line with us, the other girls on line wouldn't let her in. The rumpus attracted the mounted law who tried to make out what the screaming was about & let her back in line but not before he shook his finger at her saying at her age she should know better. She was all set to do battle & we had to hold onto her she was so outraged at being unjustly accused & at his reference to her age,we reminding her he just could send us to the back of the line which was around the corner and 2 blocks further down. We had jazz, the big bands of the Dorsey Brothers. Woody Herman, Harry James, the blues, the singing groups. Peggy Lee, Doris Day & Les Brown...I could go on...but I remember a cousin, Paul, in Italy after V-E Day getting killed by an unexploded bomb, my cousin Salvie, at Tarawa when they hit the beach and a Japanese soldier turned a flaming torch on his buddy just ahead of him..Salvie was slightly burned but wound up in a mental hospital in Florida..Uncle Tom, his Dad, a bright redhead went down to see him in Florida...he returned home 2 months later with a wide white streak in his hair. They transferred Salvie to Lyons Mental Hospital in N.J. My cousin Eddie who was in Iwo Gima and took his own personal snapshot of the Marines raising the American flag, telling us of the guys in the snapshot who were killed not long after. I was so naive when the war began...I asked my Dad if now that we were all Americans fighting the war, wouldn't crime stop in our country because we'd all be defending this country together? He just smiled and patted my shoulder...I later learned about black market food stamps...black market everything.
V-J Day meant different things to different people...grief and happiness. I'll say I do remember my cousin John getting all the health care he needed from being wounded in the war, how he could buy a house as soon as he got out of service, how he was able to attend college on Uncle Sam, how every benefit was there for our returning fighters and Uncle Sam picked up the tab. I think back and I know the times I grew up in were really wonderful even w/Dec 7th, V-E and V-J days because the entire country became a community. They didn't call them wars afterwards, the Korean incident (my husband served as a Marine, my brother a Navy Lt on a destroyer), Vietnam, Desert Sand,)Iraq,..I don't know, will the young remember any of the music?
I was born on Aug 14, 1950
Peter Accinno West TisburyI was born on Aug 14, 1950 and grew up in RI, where VJ Day is still a state holiday. As such, I have a special interest in the day and what it represents to all of us. Men like one of my uncles and John Mayhew fought hard to make VJ Day happen, and we all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Not to mislead anyone on my
Peter Accinno West TisburyNot to mislead anyone on my posting. I was born on one of the anniversaries of VJ Day in the 1950's.
Was born August 13,1945.. Yes
RoseMarie CaliforniaWas born August 13,1945.. Yes~~ 70 years old as of two days...However, Very aware of V-J Day...
Shirley, I enjoyed your reflection and honor those who had to partake of that necessary war..In
addition, we just love those pilots !!!!!!
Yes, we do, RoseMarie!
Shirley West TisburyYes, we do, RoseMarie!
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