In summer 1945, Japan’s war in China — which had consumed an estimated 20 million Chinese lives since 1937, the true beginning of World War Two — raged on.
So did fighting in the Philippines where, on May 21, Darvin Lange from Wanda “died of injuries, which he had received at the explosion of a Japanese cave,” a letter to his parents explained:
This explosion was a terrific one and claimed the lives of several other American soldiers. Your son was injured by flying rocks, from which injuries he later died…His comrades and superior officers alike tell me that he conducted himself according to the highest standards of our soldiers in battle and that he quit himself like the man that he was.
So did the air campaign which claimed the life of Gordon Nelson from Strandquist on June 22. “Captain Miller’s plane was at the assembly point when enemy fighters came through the formation and attacked his plane,” an eyewitness reported:
No. 1 engine was feathered and No. 3 and No. 4 engines were smoking. The plane then went into a slow spin, but straightened out again. The plane started straight down, the right wing broke off, and then the plane exploded. The aircraft crashed into the sea.
350,000 allied prisoners continued to suffer; of the 59 men of Brainerd’s 34th Tank Company captured in April 1942, only 32 remained alive.
On July 26, the Allies called on Japan to surrender, but this was rejected. The invasion of Kyushu, scheduled for November, promised horrors greater even than Okinawa. MacArthur, commanding the invasion force, predicted 95,000 American casualties — a third fatal — in the first 90 days; the Joint Chiefs of Staff calculated that conquering Japan would cost 1.6 million American casualties, including 380,000 dead. The losses among Japanese civilians would be even higher.
Then, on August 6, Hiroshima was incinerated with an atomic bomb, killing between 80,000 and 156,000 civilians. Three days later, Nagasaki was obliterated, killing between 60,000 and 80,000 civilians. Japan surrendered on August 15. The war was over.
“I was in Pearl Harbor, standing on the deck of a small carrier that was transporting me back to the U.S. when the war ended,” Willmar’s “Bud” Quam remembered, “All of the ships…were blowing their whistles. It was a wonderful feeling.” Paul Norby from Minneapolis was on his way to bomb Tokyo. “We received messages, ‘No go, return to base,’ and ‘No go, war is over.” “V-J Day was the happiest day of our life,” Cloquet’s Bob Drannen, training on Guam for the invasion of Japan, remembered. “We knew that a lot of us would never be living if we’d had to land on Japan.” “That was the moment — the end of an era of hell — the beginning of an era of hysterical joy,” Ernest Miller, commander of the 34th Tank Company remembered. “Prisoners screamed, and wept and prayed…It was stark pandemonium…And through it all was the common expression that leaped from prisoner to prisoner: ‘Boy, we made it! We made it!’” Miller later learned that his son, James, had been killed fighting in Italy.
There would be no more letters like that received by Darvin Lange’s parents, nor that written by St. Paul’s Richard E. Fleming to his fiancee, Peggy Crooks, six days before his death at the battle of Midway in June 1942:
Letters like this should not be morbid or maudlin and we’ll let it suffice to say that I’ve been prepared for this rendezvous for some time. I hope that you will not entirely forget me, but I also hope that you don’t let this cause you any lasting sorrow. You’re the finest girl I ever knew and I know that the future years hold much for you. This is something that comes to all of us; we can only bow before it…we really had something. Always regard it as such and don’t let any of it cause you sorrow. All my love, Dick
Peggy died in 1997 without ever marrying.
Shortly after the war, Fairmont’s Byrl Carson, a veteran of Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal, wrote: “Was not needlessly wasted time or effort that I spent while in the service of this wonderful free country of ours.” These men and women had helped to ensure that a war started by Japan on their terms was ended by America on theirs.
This is adapted from a forthcoming article in our magazine, Thinking Minnesota.
