![]() ![]() Intent on ginning up controversy, they erroneously refer to the holiday as V-J Day, year after year, portraying it as some anachronism from a less enlightened (read: less politically sensitive) era.īut that has never been its name. Victory Day’s problems, not surprisingly, also spring from inaccurate reporting in the local media. Local public-relations consultant David Preston also supported keeping the holiday in a 1995 Providence Journal op-ed, but took pains to explain that the holiday was never “V-J Day” in Rhode Island: Were these means justified? Does America still have what it takes to force unconditional surrender? Will we ever face a war quite like WWII again-a conventional clash of major powers, with clear moral lines and a final, and deeply constructive, military and political resolution? These important questions are open to debate, and observance of V-J day reminds us that these questions, as well as the past sacrifice of our fighting men, remain worthy of our reflection and attention today. armed forces and citizens slowly but surely turned the tide. It was a war that opened with humiliating and painful setbacks, but the determination and courage of the U.S. It is easy to forget how difficult and bloody the Pacific war was up until the very end, and the million Allied casualties that would have resulted from an invasion of the home islands. V-J Day keeps alive the magnitude of the event, and even those who use the day to sail in Narragansett Bay or visit the beaches in Newport have more awareness of the event it marks than they would if it were abolished. Lazar Berman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, argued in 2011 that there are good reasons to continue to commemorate the end of World War II seven decades later: Even the jewelry makers flourished, turning out medals for the armed forces. The machine shops of the Blackstone Valley thrummed with parts for guns. Liberty ships were made in Providence, torpedoes in Newport, army blankets and uniforms in textile mills all over the state. A state that suffered through the Depression suddenly blossomed into an industrial powerhouse when war came. When Franklin Roosevelt said that the United States would become the arsenal of democracy, he could have been speaking about Rhode Island. ![]() …īut the naval presence was only a small part of the Rhode Island war effort. Kennedy, received his training at the Navy’s station at Melville. PT boats were built in Bristol and the man who was to become the most celebrated PT commander in history, John F. Quonset hosted thousands of troops who built Quonset huts and trained engineers and Seabees to work on ships. Newport was home to the Atlantic destroyer fleet, where thousands of sailors trained for service abroad. From Westerly to Woonsocket and everywhere in between, Rhode Island was focused on winning what has become known as, in Studs Terkel’s famous words, “The Good War.” If ever a state was at the center of the American war effort in World War II, it was Rhode Island. ![]() Sandra Barone pushed to rename it “Rhode Island Veteran’s Day” or “Peace and Remembrance Day.” At one point the Rhode Island Japan Society hired lawyers to press a case against the name, and in 1990 lawmakers passed a resolution saying “Victory Day is not a day to express satisfaction in the destruction and death caused by nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Ed DiPrete tried to transform it into Governor’s Bay Day, and former Barrington Rep. Japanese officials said Victory Day was harming trade between the two nations, and a local Chamber of Commerce official called the holiday “embarrassing.” But by the mid-1980s – with Japan’s economic might growing – there was a lively debate about whether it should be scrapped. The holiday was established here in 1948, three years after World War II ended. 14 deserves special attention for its interplay of state, local, national, and even international politics,” Len Travers writes in the “Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days.” Indeed, as far back as 1957 The New York Times reported that what it called “V-J Day” was “always a big legal holiday in Rhode Island.” “The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. Rhode Island has been on its own since 1975, when Arkansas dropped the holiday – which it had already rechristened as “World War II Memorial Day” – and reportedly gave state workers their birthdays off as a consolation. ![]() (And yes, the official legal name of the holiday in Rhode Island is Victory Day, not V-J Day.) Monday is the 67th annual Victory Day in Rhode Island, keeping the state as the only one to still observe a legal holiday that marks Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. (WPRI) – Like Del’s, Victory Day is a uniquely Rhode Island tradition. ![]()
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