When President Harry Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945, it was time to celebrate.
Jackson County residents reacted in a fashion similar to what was seen in communities large and small across the country. The scenes of huge crowds in New York’s Time Square were repeated, on a smaller scale, in Kansas City and Independence,
One difference in Jackson County, of course, is that President Truman and his family happened to live in Independence. Many local residents knew individual Truman family members as a friend, or neighbor, or the occasional customer at the Maple Avenue and Union Street gas station. As described here, in this month’s E-Journal, Independence Examiner journalist Sue Gentry, a friend of Bess Truman, witnessed the president’s White House announcement and quickly transmitted her story back to Independence.
But other than that, the Jackson County celebrations - just like many across the country - included impromptu parades, the throwing of pillow feathers from high windows, and the indiscriminate hugging of strangers.
To Jackson County residents of 2025, the scenes recall the recent Union Station victory celebrations following Super Bowl and World Series victories.
But to compare the end of World War II to professional sports championships trivializes what was being celebrated in 1945 - the vast and palpable relief that the war was over and the soldiers and sailors soon would be returning home.
Eighty years ago, nobody knew of an atomic bomb.
They just knew - beginning on May 8, when Truman had declared Victory in Europe - that a traditional invasion of the Japanese home islands was being planned, with the projected number of casualties too terrible to contemplate.
Accordingly, the widespread feeling in Jackson County, as Brad Pace writes, had been one of “dread.
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