Valley vet recalls subdued VE Day, but jubilant VJ Day in Youngstown

POLAND

There was no big celebration May 8, 1945 — Victory in Europe Day — by members of the Army’s 44th Infantry Division, which had fought in several major battles from Cherbourg, France, to the small town of Arzl im Pitztal in the Austrian Alps.

“We were mostly just relieved,” said Vincent G. Ballanca, a member of the 157th Field Artillery Battalion attached to the 44th, which had stopped in Arzl after some 244 days of combat, broken only by one weekend of rest and recreation in Paris.

“We knew the fighting was over in Europe, but we also knew we were on our way to Japan,” explained Ballanca, 91, of Poland Township.

“We got clean uniforms and hot food and waited,” he said.

At the time, soldiers did not know the United States was going to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and three days later on Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s unconditional surrender.

But, said Ballanca, who grew up in Lowellville and was home on a 30-day leave to see his first wife, Margaret Carducci, and their first child before heading to the Pacific Theater, the celebration Aug. 15, 1945, of Victory in Japan Day was anything but quiet.

There were thousands of people in downtown Youngstown, most of them drunk, Ballanca said.

“I know I was,” he said with a laugh.

“Thank God [President] Truman had what it took to drop that bomb,” Ballanca said.

Read more of his memories in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.