![]() Truman announced news of Japan’s surrender in a press conference at the White House: “This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor. In Washington on August 14, President Harry S. “Should we continue to fight,” Hirohito declared, “it would not only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation but would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.” Reaction to Japanese Surrender In a radio address in the early afternoon of August 15 (August 14 in the United States), Emperor Hirohito urged his people to accept the surrender, blaming the use of the “new and most cruel bomb” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the country’s defeat. The following day, the Japanese government issued a statement accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. READ MORE: Why the US Dropped the Second A-Bomb Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 40,000. The Potsdam Declaration, issued by Allied leaders on July 26, 1945, called on Japan to surrender if it did, it was promised a peaceful government according to “the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.” If it did not, it would face “prompt and utter destruction.” The embattled Japanese government in Tokyo refused to surrender, and on August 6 the American B-29 plane Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, killing more than 70,000 people and destroying a 5-square-mile expanse of the city. V-J Day parades are held in several other locations across the United States, including Seymour, Indiana Moosup, Connecticut and Arma, Kansas. By 1945, in an attempt to break Japanese resistance before a land invasion became necessary, the Allies were consistently bombarding Japan from air and sea, dropping some 100,000 tons of explosives on more than 60 Japanese cities and towns between March and July 1945 alone.ĭid you know? Rhode Island is the only state with a holiday dedicated to V-J Day (its official name is Victory Day) it is celebrated on the second Monday in August. Over the next three years, superior technology and productivity allowed the Allies to wage an increasingly one-sided war against Japan in the Pacific, inflicting enormous casualties while suffering relatively few. ![]() Japan’s ally Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, then declared war on the United States, turning the war raging in Europe into a truly global conflict. ![]() naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, capped a decade of deteriorating relations between Japan and the United States and led to an immediate U.S. Japan’s devastating surprise aerial attack on the U.S. From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki ![]()
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