They called it Victory Day
Monday, August 8, 2005 BY ELIZABETH GUDRAIS
Journal Staff Writer
On Dec. 15, 1943, two 18-year-old Woonsocket boys went to Providence and enlisted in the Navy. Rene Hemond became a signalman, tapping out Morse code aboard an infantry landing craft that delivered U.S. soldiers to France.Robert Tellier became a pharmacist's mate aboard the Firedrake, a ship that carried as much as 8,000 tons of ammunition to reload other ships in the Pacific.
On Aug. 14, 1945, the childhood friends were on opposite sides of thePacific. Hemond's ship was off the west coast of Canada, near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, when the news of Japan's surrender came over the radio.Since the vessel was only 180 feet long and 24 feet wide, "the celebration was very limited," Hemond remembers. "Everybody cheered, and I guess we had lemonade. I'm not a drinking man anyway." Eight thousand miles away in the South Pacific, it was a different story. "All of a sudden," Tellier says, "it came over the radio: The war was over."
Japan's formal surrender didn't come until Sept. 2, with the signing of terms aboard the battleship Missouri, in Tokyo Bay. But the celebration didn't wait."What happened in the next hour was unbelievable," Tellier recalls.In a cataclysm of light and sound, every ship in the harbor opened fire."You think the Fourth of July fireworks in New York were spectacular?" Tellier asks, smiling at the memory. "If there was a plane flying overhead, he would have been a goner."
RHODE ISLAND is the only state that still commemorates World War II's end with an official holiday. Arkansas, believed to have been the last other state to celebrate the day, dropped its holiday in 1975.Brig. Gen. John L. Enright, a Vietnam War veteran and interim adjutant general of the Rhode Island National Guard, says that the preservation of Victory Day as a holiday signifies this little state's stubborn insistence on forging its own path. "We were the first ones to declare independence, back in 1775," Enright says. "I guess it says something about our independence."
Today -- the 60th anniversary of the war's end -- state and municipal offices in Rhode Island are closed, and a handful of communities will mark the occasion with a parade, a concert or a wreath-laying ceremony. It's a far cry from the state's first commemoration of Victory Day. On Aug. 15, 1948, 3,000 people gathered in downtown Providence to hear an 11-piece band. Nearly every city and town in the state held a ceremony. More than a thousand people visited two Navy vessels that were docked at the state pier.
The stores that stayed open sparked a public outcry, and the General Assembly passed a law to assess fines against businesses that refused to close. Today, retail stores, liquor stores and supermarkets, as well as some banks, will be open, as will federal offices and U.S. stock markets. Many Rhode Islanders see the day as an extra day to hit the beach. Victory Day has become "almost a secondary holiday, not a primary holiday," Enright says.
But Jack Lucas, who coordinates Pawtucket's annual ceremony, says he isn't disappointed that the turnout for the ceremony is relatively small. "There are so many distractions today, for any person," says Lucas, a Lincoln resident and World War II veteran. "Everybody is trying to make a living." At that ceremony, today at 11 a.m., at the city's Veterans Memorial Park, next to Pawtucket City Hall, a Bataan Death March survivor will speak. It's important that Rhode Island maintain Victory Day as a holiday, Lucas says, "in order that we never forget the sacrifices our forefathers made."
OVER THE YEARS, state officials have proposed changing the holiday's name to World Peace Day, Remembrance Day, and Rhode Island Veterans' Day.In 1989, Gov. Edward D. DiPrete declared the second Monday in August to be Governor's Bay Day, a day to celebrate Narragansett Bay, when entrance to state beaches would be free.
Ten years later, Gov. Lincoln C. Almond finally gave in to veterans' pleas, moving Bay Day to the last weekend in July, so it wouldn't fall on the same day as Victory Day.Interestingly, the holiday's official name was never Victory over Japan Day or V-J Day. It was always called Victory Day -- but that has never stopped many people from referring to it as V-J Day.Those who object to the holiday and its current name say it's at best an anachronism, now that Japan is a U.S. ally. At worst, detractors say, the holiday gives rise to discrimination and hatred against Japanese-Americans and other Americans of Asian descent.
Proponents of eliminating the holiday point out that the event that sparked the Japanese surrender was the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- an act that killed 120,000 civilians outright, and twice that number over time. "There's nothing controversial about celebrating the victory in World War II," says Andrew Huebner, a visiting professor at Brown University who teaches the history course "World War II in American History and Memory." "But if it appears to celebrate the killing of more than 100,000 civilians, that's a problem."
V-J DAY'S most famous image -- the Life magazine photograph depicting a sailor, in New York City's Times Square, grabbing a nurse by the waist and kissing her -- speaks of a more innocent time, a time when the U.S. public accepted those bombings without reservation. Later, during the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the public became "more questioning and less credulous" of its government's military actions, Huebner says. That skepticism also affects the way people view World War II.Each time someone has proposed eliminating the Victory Day
holiday, veterans have rallied in opposition. They say the holiday has
nothing to do with hating the Japanese or killing civilians.
The first Victory Day "meant freedom for all of us," says Frederick Klockars, a North Smithfield resident who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.Without that victory, Klockars says, "We would not have the freedom we have today."Besides, says Rene Hemond, to call the day by any other name would be to lose reverence for the war that sent his generation around the world and transformed their lives."We went in as kids," Hemond says. "We came out as men."
THOUGH ATTENDANCE at today's Victory Day celebrations surely won't rival that of 1948, the veterans say turnout has increased since Sept. 11, 2001."Now, there's more recognition for the veterans because we, as Americans, experienced the horrors of war," Hemond says. Ordinary citizens, he says, "can appreciate their own country a lot more."But Victory Day faces an uncertain fate, as its heartiest advocates continue to dwindle in number. Of the 16 million people who served in the U.S. military during World War II, only about a quarter are still alive. "We watch the obituaries every day," Hemond says. "Once a month, at least, we go to a funeral."
IN WOONSOCKET, on Aug. 14, 1945, Jacqueline Gauthier, then 14, was at home on Paradis Avenue when she heard the news."All the whistles were going, and the church bells," she recalls. "I wanted to go where all the action was, on Main Street. My mother said no." The day was bittersweet for her family -- her brother, Maurice, had died at Normandy on D-Day. But after V-J Day, she says, "the men started to come back and things turned back to normal." Gauthier married one of those men who came back -- Al Auclair, a Marine Corps mortarman who had fought at Iwo Jima, in the bloody battle of February 1945 that killed nearly 8,000 U.S. troops and 21,000 Japanese. After he came home, Auclair became a state senator.
In 1995, the year that the Rhode Island Veterans' Day name-change was first proposed, he testified: "With the determination, patriotism, love of country and valor of the young men of that era, although America suffered greatly, it was able to survive and overcome the enemy. "Our heroes -- for truly, everyone who served in battle were heroes -- should always be remembered, and their valor should never be forgotten. They were the victors, and August fourteenth should always belong
to them."
