Peace Achieved, But The Cold War Begins

Fifty years ago this month: Part of The Seattle Times series, appearing the first Sunday of each month, highlighting the events and people making the headlines in wartime Washington State. James R. Warren, director emeritus of the Museum of History and Industry, is an Army veteran and former prisoner of war of the Germans.

This is the final column of this World War II series. I thank readers for the hundreds of letters and cards received over the 46 months I have written it. They attest to a genuine interest in the history of the war and in the experiences of the veterans who, at tremendous cost, fought on to victory half a century ago. - James R. Warren

In September 1945 the long and bloody war finally comes to an end.

During a 20-minute ceremony aboard the battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, Japan signs an unconditional-surrender agreement on Sept. 2.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepts the surrender. Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu leads the Japanese delegation. All the Allied nations are represented at the signing. Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz signs for the United States and Adm. Sir Bruce Fraser for Britain. Also present are Gens. Jonathan Wainwright and Arthur Percival, war prisoners of Japan since Corregidor and Singapore fell early in the war.

Japanese forces in Southeast Asia surrender to Adm. Louis Mountbatten on Sept. 12 in Singapore, and Hong Kong is turned over to the British navy Sept. 16.

MacArthur assumes control of a country that views defeat as dishonor. Even after atom bombs devastate two of their cities, several Japanese military leaders oppose surrender, arguing that the Japanese should die to the last man rather than live in defeat.

War-crimes trials begin in Nuremberg, Germany, in November 1945 and in Japan in May 1946.

Nine Germans are found guilty and hanged. Hermann Goering cheats the executioner by swallowing cyanide the night before his date with the gallows. Other former Nazis are sentenced to prison.

In Japan, Gen. Hideki Tojo, head of Japan's government for much of the war, shoots himself but is saved by American doctors. He is hanged with four other Japanese officers found guilty of wartime atrocities. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita also receives a death sentence for atrocities that include the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

On Jan. 10, 1946, the first session of the United Nations convenes in London. On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivers his famous speech at Fulton, Mo., in which he warns that "an iron curtain has descended across Europe."

The Cold War, with the Soviet Union on the other side of that curtain, begins.

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall tells of a plan to provide massive assistance to war-wracked Europe, since referred to as the Marshall Plan.

Allied military occupation of Japan begins in late August 1945 and ends officially April 28, 1952, seven months after Japan signed a peace treaty with 48 nations at San Francisco.

The local news

Maj. Robert Goldsworthy of Seattle, shot down in December 1944 while piloting a B-29 over Tokyo, is found alive in a Japanese prison camp. - Sept. 3.

An Army transport plane completes a 4,585-mile flight from Tokyo to Boeing Field via the Aleutians in 21 hours, 40 minutes. The event is touted as "paving the way for an oriental air route between Seattle and the Far East." Pilot Maj. G.E. Cain and co-pilot Lyle Spencer are Seattleites. - Sept. 3.

The first peacetime Labor Day in nearly four years finds thousands of Washingtonians on the highways. - Sept. 3.

Sgt. Norman Burton, 20, Air Force gunner and West Seattle High School graduate, missing in action over Poland for 17 months, is declared dead. His brother Robert, flying with the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed 18 months earlier. - Sept. 4.

The family of Pfc. Joe Mann of Reardon, Lincoln County, receives his Medal of Honor. While on the front lines in Holland a year before war's end, Mann's platoon had been isolated by German forces. Standing in full view of the enemy, he destroyed their artillery position with a bazooka and set off a German ammunition dump before being hit in both arms. Mann insisted on standing his turn at guard that night, although the medic who dressed his wounds had bandaged his arms to his body. When an enemy grenade bounced into the dugout, Mann, unable to use his arms, yelled "Grenade," and fell on it. Mann died in the explosion but his action saved the lives of six buddies. - Sept. 5.

Men of "Seattle's own" 41st Division arrive home after 40 months in the South Pacific. - Sept. 5.

Construction begins on a new American Legion service center for veterans at Seventh Avenue and University Street in Seattle - Sept. 5.

The output for Boeing's Seattle and Renton plants since Pearl Harbor is reported to be approximately 8,200 airplanes, more than 1,000 of them B-29 Superfortresses. - Sept. 6.

Seattle mothers call for early release of fathers still in the service. - Sept. 6.

Capt. Charles "Ted" Scholl, a Roosevelt High School graduate, is awarded the Air Medal for his part in an earlier glider rescue of a WAC corporal and two servicemen from a hidden valley in New Guinea. Later, he picked up the 15 Filipino paratroopers who had assisted in the rescue. - Sept. 7.

Fifty prefabricated homes built for atomic workers at Richland are being moved to the Washington State College campus in Pullman for use by married students. - Sept. 11.

Staff Sgt. Edward Kardong, a Bellevue High School graduate killed in action in Europe, is awarded a posthumous Silver Star for leading his platoon in the rout of 100 enemy troops, the battle in which he was mortally wounded. His wife and baby son in Kirkland accept his medal - Sept. 19.

Casualty list grows

Though the war has ended, casualty reports continue to grow.

The parents of Quartermaster Sgt. William Schultz, 27, of Seattle are notified of his death in a Japanese prison camp in 1944. - Sept. 13.

The widow and three children of Maj. Ralph Brown, a former Seattle Methodist pastor and Army chaplain, are told he survived capture on Bataan and a later sinking of a prison ship, only to die in a Honshu prison camp nine months before war's end. - Sept. 14.

Lt. John F. Reardon, 26, a graduate of Franklin High School and the University of Washington, missing on a May 1945 aerial-reconnaissance mission over Luzon in the Philippines, is declared dead. - Sept. 20.

After searching for his parents for many months, Sgt. Herbert Lobl, an Austrian-born Seattle soldier serving in Europe, finds his mother alive in a forced-labor concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. His father is still missing. - Sept. 27.