The War is Over

You'd never know it from reading or watching the so-called mainstream media, but this week is a pretty important anniversary in American history. I wonder why we're not hearing more about it?

It's the 61st anniversary of the end of World War II. Sixty-one years ago this week, the empire of Japan surrendered to the United States, and a war that had been expected to go into 1946 or possibly even 1947, with an invasion of the mainland of Japan that was expected to take hundreds of thousands of American lives, ended faster than anyone had anticipated.

A little time capsule of how people felt at that time is preserved in a very special radio broadcast. The minute word got out that Emperor Hirohito had made a radio speech surrendering to the Americans, people in the States went nuts. In Los Angeles, they immediately threw together plans for a "Victory Extra" broadcast of the radio show devoted to America's servicemen fighting overseas, "Command Performance."

They must have thrown that broadcast together in two or three hours. Everyone in Hollywood wanted to be a part of it -- so much so that they had more movie stars than they knew what to do with. The list is staggering: Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, William Powell, Bette Davis, Ronald Colman, Jimmy Durante, Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Danny Kaye, Claudette Colbert, Carmen Miranda, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra...

The irony of the broadcast is that the one man who should have been the host that night wasn't there. He was in England and couldn't get back in time, so Bob Hope missed what might have been the biggest show of his career. Bing Crosby hosted the "Victory Extra."

It's impossible to describe the emotion running through the crowd in Los Angeles that night. You just have to hear the broadcast (which is available on an MP3 disc through OTRCAT.com, as well as some other places). The war had ended so abruptly that the reality of the moment hadn't caught up with them yet -- you can tell that they can't believe it's really happening. They sound giddy. Crosby and Sinatra do a comedy bit together, and Sinatra gets so carried away by emotion that, after he sings "The House I Live In," he kisses Bing Crosby on stage -- and the crowd goes crazy. Crosby's deadpan reply is priceless: "I won't wash my face for days."

They had so many stars who wanted to be a part of the broadcast they didn't know what to do with them all, so at one point they just had a parade of movie and radio stars come up to the mike, identify themselves, and say just a sentence or two. With the benefit of hindsight it's unbearably poignant to hear these glamorous stars, voices filled with emotion, saying things like: "The world's rejoicing tonight. We've built a victory -- now we can build a peace!"

And then someone steps up to the microphone who wasn't a movie star, but who at that moment might have seemed bigger than all the stars put together.

Most young people have no idea who Bill Mauldin was, but during World War II, and for many years to come, he was one of the most important voices of his time. Mauldin was the first man to win the Pulitzer Prize for cartoons (the youngest person ever to win it at that time), and if you want to know what it was really like to fight World War II, all you have to do is look at the cartoons of Bill Mauldin. His soldiers aren't the larger-than-life "greatest generation" heroes that people like Tom Brokaw would have you believe fought that war. His dogfaces are dirty, smelly, and doing an unpleasant job any way they can so they go home. One of my favorite Mauldin cartoons shows Willie (one of his two most famous characters, Willie and Joe), standing in front of a medic's table. The medic has a medal out in front of him and Willie says, "Just gimme a coupla aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart."

Mauldin's cartoons in "Stars and Stripes" were so squalid, and depicted American GIs is such a realistic manner (bitching about officers, using profanity and knowing that dry socks are more important than almost anything else with the possible exception of alcohol), that no less than General George Patton wanted him fired, because he thought Mauldin's cartoons were bad for morale. General Eisenhower refused to allow it, because the soldiers in the field loved Mauldin's cartoons for the same reason that Patton hated them -- they told the truth about what a filthy, disgusting job fighting a war really is. All Willie and Joe want to do is grab the nearest bottle of booze and get as drunk as they can, and they're just praying that one day they'll be able to come home.

So when Bill Mauldin came to the microphone that August night, he didn't mince words. He knew exactly what every serviceman in that theater in Los Angeles, or listening by shortwave all over the world, wanted to hear about what the most famous fictional characters of the war were doing to celebrate America's victory.

"This is Bill Mauldin, gents," he begins. "Joe and Willie are tying one on tonight..."

He keeps talking, but you can't hear what he's saying over the noise of the crowd. They're laughing, screaming, cheering -- and some, I suspect, are crying as well. Because they know what that means. If Joe and Willie can go out and get stinking, shit-faced drunk, then the fighting really is over and the world is at peace. It's a beautiful moment in an amazing broadcast.

That was 61 years ago this week. And in January of 2007, sometime around the 23rd if my amateur calculations are correct, we will have been in Iraq longer than we fought World War II.

And there isn't going to be any "Victory Extra" broadcast when this war is over.

Tom Moran