By H. Bruce Franklin
August 14, 1945. The day Japan surrendered. I was eleven year old. I was
crammed in the back of a pickup packed with other boys and girls, all
yelling our hearts out as loud as we could to be heard over the
cacophony of honking horns and howling air raid sirens. We were part of
an impromptu motorcade weaving through the evening streets of our
Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn. Everywhere we went—past the sidewalk
fruit and vegetable stands, the storefront A&P exuding the smell of
freshly ground coffee, the fish market and the kosher delicatessen along
Avenue J, the small row houses and big apartment houses on the side
streets, along Coney Island Avenue, with its rows of small stores dotted
with small restaurants and soda fountains, where the electric trolley
cars were clanging their bells nonstop—more and more cheering people
poured onto the sidewalks, waving American flags and homemade signs,
hugging, dancing. We kids in the truck were all screaming, “Peace!
Peace! The war is over!” We believed this was the end of not just this
war but of war itself, that we were all going to live the rest of our
lives in a prosperous and victorious nation, on a peaceful planet.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/14/august-12-22-1945-washington-starts-the-korean-and-vietnam-wars/
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