Today, Sept.2, 2012, is "VJ" Day--for those who have forgotten.

.....Sixty-seven years ago on Sept. 2, 1945 the Japanese signed official surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, officially ending WWII.  Victory over Japan Day, or VJ Day is the name chosen for the day on which the surrender occurred,  and on subsequent anniversaries of that event--which happens to be today. The term has been applied to  both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made –- to the afternoon of August 15, 1945, in Japan, and, because of time zone differences, to August 14, 1945 (when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands) –- as well as to September 2, 1945, when the surrender documents were signed.

.....On this day, we stopped flying combat missions in the Pacific out of Attu in Alaska and we celebrated in Naval Aviation fashion--that is to get off base, drink whatever we could find that would lead to inebriation, and look for women who also wanted to celebrate for whatever reasons they had, and in whatever fashion was on their minds.  On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. On 9 August, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan--(a little late, don't you think?) The Japanese government on 10 August communicated its intention to surrender but with too many conditions for the offer to be acceptable to the Allies.  But they eventually caved in under the threat of another disastrous bombing.

.....I, of course, was ecstatic; I was ready to go home on September 3, but unfortunately that is not the way it played out.  Military was being discharged according to the number of "points" each had accumulated depending upon the extent of combat service each had seen.  I quickly counted my points based on the cockamamie system some politico or general had invented, and I came to the conclusion that I would be going home much sooner than most--sometime in November--and so I was given a train ride across country and was discharged on Nov. 19, 1945, exactly three years and one day since I enlisted.  

.....Strangely enough, and coincidentally, my nephew Mark and his children, Meghan and Jake came from Sarasota to visit my sister in Boca Raton, and they came to see us for an hour or so on this very day. Mark was a Navy veteran and Meghan in her 20s and her brother, Jake, who just graduated from high school, are both going to boot camp at the US Marine Corps base in Paris Island next week.  That will make our family a bonifide military family!  My father was in a WWI Aerial squadron; my brother-in-law was in the Army in WWII, and I in the Navy.  My daughter, Robin, was a Lt. Colonel in the Marine Corps, and her husband, Rich Higgins was a Colonel.  Rhoda's son, Jon, was in the Navy for 10  years, and now my granddaughter, Katrina has been in the Navy for the past five years. 

.....So, it would be wise not to pick a fight with us!