Vets grateful President Truman used A-bomb to end WWII

By William K. Alcorn | alcorn@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Seven decades ago, on Aug. 14, 1945, an estimated 30,000 people jammed into Youngstown’s downtown district to celebrate the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.

Known as Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day), it marked the surrender of the last of the three Axis Powers. Japan’s formal surrender ceremony took place Sept. 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

Italy’s surrender was announced Sept. 8, 1943, and Germany’s surrender, dubbed Victory In Europe (V-E Day), was May 8, 1945.

Men in the military celebrated too, but they also breathed a sigh of relief because many were preparing to participate in the invasion of the Japanese mainland.

After the U.S. experience driving the Japanese out of the Pacific islands, it was generally believed an invasion of mainland Japan would be even more deadly.

Fearing horrific casualties if Japan was invaded, President Harry S. Truman ordered a 5-ton atom bomb dropped over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, reducing 4 square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killing 80,000 people.

When Japan did not immediately surrender, Truman ordered another atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, a ship-building center, on Aug. 9, killing an additional 40,000 people.

Japan capitulated five days later.

“When Truman had the bomb dropped, it saved lives on both sides,” said former Marine Leo Kruise, 93, of Youngstown, one of the area veterans interviewed who were in the military when Japan surrendered.

Kruise, a crew chief/tail gunner on a PBJ-1 [B-25] bomber, had just returned from a 21-day leave and had been at the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point, N.C., for one day when the war ended.

Art Mirto, 88, a Navy Seabee, was with the 24th Battalion, attached to the 1st Marine Division, and was on Guam, preparing to be sent to China when the war ended. The Marines were nevertheless sent to China but the Seabees stayed on Guam.

“My hero is Harry Truman. He saved a lot of lives,” Mirto said.

“The only thing they told us was that the invasion of Japan was set for Nov. 1, and we were to be in the second wave bringing in equipment. I didn’t want to go to China anyway,” he said.

Ernest Bernard, 95, an Army Air Force bomber pilot, who flew B-15s and B-24s, never made it overseas although he was close to going twice.

The last time, he was sitting with other pilots in a plane on the runway at Fort Dix, N.J., Army Air Force Base, which later became McGuire Air Force Base, slated to be replacements for the invasion of Japan.

“We had finished training at Fort Dix and were sitting in a plane to go overseas and bomb Japan when we heard the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima,” he said.

Kruise resides in Youngstown and Mirto and Bernard, both formerly of Youngstown, are residents at Whispering Pines Retirement Village in Columbiana.

Kruise, Mirto and Bernard, like their civilian Mahoning Valley counterparts, celebrated the end of the war.

“I hit a lot of clubs in the Youngstown area,” said Bernard, with a smile.

Kruise, who flew 102 bombing missions, most of them providing close support to ground Marines invading islands in the Pacific, said railroad cars filled with beer had already been brought to Cherry Point in anticipation of the war ending.

“I had a friend with a yellow Plymouth convertible. We drove up to Washington, D.C., and visited a lot of beer joints. The streets were full of people, We didn’t have to buy anything,” he said with a laugh.

Kruise admitted he “kind of liked” the war even thought he knew the chances of coming back were not good.

His plane was hit several times, a piece of hot shrapnel burned his neck, and his plane crashed once on takeoff, but he was never wounded.

“It wasn’t too bad overseas. When I wasn’t flying, I was playing softball,” he said.