"Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death -- the seas bear only commerce -- men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at Peace. The Holy Mission has been completed."
-- Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 1945
On Aug. 14, 1945, the world heard what millions had hoped and prayed for after long years of brutal warfare.
Japan surrendered, unconditionally.
A formal ceremony, with representatives of the Japanese Empire signing the Instrument of Surrender, would take place Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
But on that day, as Japan's military was ordered to stand down, there was celebration in the world knowing that the worst conflict in history was over, and the values of democracy and liberty had not just survived, but prevailed.
The surrender came as Allied forces were gearing up for Operation Downfall, an invasion of the Japanese home islands that planners estimated would cost millions of lives on both sides.
But after the Soviet Union -- which the Japanese had hoped would broker a face-saving peace with the Allies -- attacked the Japanese in Manchuria and two U.S. atomic bombs -- including one fueled with plutonium from the government's Hanford Nuclear Reservation -- obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito instructed his war council to accept the Allies' demand for unconditional surrender rather than total annihilation.
While the announcement of Germany's unconditional surrender three months earlier was met somewhat somberly in Yakima County, residents were more unrestrained when President Harry S. Truman announced Japan's surrender.
It was more akin to when the World War I armistice was announced, with people spontaneously taking to the street to celebrate. The Yakima Daily Republic, one of the Yakima Herald-Republic's predecessors, reported that the strain of the war had instantly disappeared from people's faces as they crowded downtown shortly after Truman's announcement.
Fire sirens in Yakima and other cities blared to herald the news of the war's end, and downtown Yakima was littered with paper thrown from the A.E. Larson Building, then the tallest in the city.
Cars jammed Yakima Avenue honking horns in celebration. Two drivers got into a crash, inspected their cars, reminded each other the war was over and happily drove off.
Children also joined in, with cans and pans tied to the back of their bikes as noise maker.
The Daily Republic reported that the members of the Merry Wives Club, the spouses of service members, were "on the verge of hysterics" at the news, rejoicing that their husbands would be coming home and wondering how they might react when some of them would be seeing their children for the first time.
Toppenish's fire chief noted that the people in the Lower Valley city were somewhat more restrained in their celebrations compared to their neighbors in Yakima. But Sunnyside and Wapato had celebrations in the street as well, with servicemen in Sunnyside tearing off parts of their uniforms, declaring they didn't need them anymore.
An interfaith service was also planned to give thanks for the end of the war.
In her Daily Mirror column in the Daily Republic, S.I. Anthon said that Yakima people had again acquitted themselves well in a war, with local men serving in both Europe and Japan. She said the workers at Hanford, whose role had only been revealed a week earlier, could rightfully take credit for bringing the war to an end.
However, when the war started, 1,051 Yakima Valley residents were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to a concentration camp at Heart Mountain, Wyo., under the infamous executive order that removed all people of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast out of a misguided, racist fear that they would side with the Japanese Empire during the war.
And sadly, many Yakima County residents, including the editorial boards of Yakima's daily newspapers, gave their approval to the move.
Remembering those lost
For those families who displayed Gold Stars in their windows -- signifying that a family member had died in the service -- the news was bittersweet.
At least 317 Yakima County men were casualties in World War II. Among the first were Patrick Chess of Yakima and Henry Carl Beerman of Tieton, who were both in the Navy at Pearl Harbor. Chess was one of the 429 sailors and marines killed when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed and capsized during the attack, while Beerman was killed when an armor-piercing bomb exploded in one of the magazines of his ship, the USS Arizona.
Chess' remains were identified in 2020 and he was laid the rest in 2022 at Tahoma Cemetery in Yakima. Beerman is entombed along with his shipmates in the Arizona.
Another Yakima resident, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jack Pendleton, would be killed in an attempt to take out a German machine gun nest. Pendleton's sacrifice, which allowed his unit to advance unnoticed and take out the gun, was recognized when he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Reinhardt John Keppler, a Wapato High School graduate, received the Medal of Honor after, being wounded, directing firefighting operations on board the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco during the Battle of Guadalcanal, succumbing to his injuries.
Coast Guard Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, a South Cle Elum resident, would become the only member of the Coast Guard to receive the Medal of Honor. Munro's citation states it was awarded for his valor in leading a squadron of landing craft to rescue Marines pinned down at Guadalcanal, using his boat's machine gun to provide cover as the last Marines got off the beach until he was killed.
Mary Louise Webster, an Ellensburg woman, was killed while flying to Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilot program. She was the last WASP to die in the line of duty.
It Happened Here is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at [email protected] or 509-577-7748. Sources for this week's column include the archives of the Yakima Herald-Republic.