August 15, 1945: WAR ENDS!

Sixty-six years ago this month, the Japanese surrenderd to end World War II. On Aug. 15, 1945, my husband’s father published the final edition of the Bacolod City Free Philippines with the headline, WAR ENDS! He enclosed a copy of the newspaper with a letter to his wife, the first page posted above. He goes on to say that they printed 17,000 extra copies and distributed them in a jeep, saying, “we had to fight off the crowds that pushed and shoved to get copies........I would stand on the hood of the jeep and scatter papers over the heads of the howling mob. Some fun!” His final thoughts were: “It isn’t just every day that the world arranges such momentous and historic news for an editor to use in the closing edition of his newsaper.” Still in Luzon on Sept. 11, he encloses this Aug. 19 copy of the New York Times Overseas Weekly with another letter. He eventually returned home on Dec. 7, 1945, 4 years to the day of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.