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Vets remembered 80 years after VJ Day and end of WWII
by Dennis Anderson
special to Aerotech News
With Labor Day so close we often brush past dates in Au- gust, and this is one that few in the United States paid much at- tention to, but now that we have already lost most of our World War II veterans, it is a day that should be marked.
Of the 16 million Ameri- cans who served, approximately 66,000 are alive, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Af- fairs. They leave this world at the rate of more than 1,000 a week.
On Aug. 14, 1945, Japan un- conditionally surrendered to the Allies. This happened after the 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Force dropped two atomic bombs, the first on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, and the second on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
After a week of argument following the carnage, Japanese leaders who urged surrender prevailed over war party propo- nents who advocated fighting to the last man, woman and child. Emperor Hirohito broke the tie and directed his people to “en- dure the unendurable.”
Delivered by the B-29 Super- fortress “Enola Gay,” named for the mother of Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, the command pilot, the A-Bomb christened “Little Boy” killed an estimated 140,000 people by the time of the Sept. 2 Surrender Ceremony in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri.
World War II’s end was 80
Photograph by Dennis Anderson
The late Lou Moore was a
World War II Army Air Force
veteran. Martinez.
Army photograph
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower meets 101st Airborne troops before D-Day.
World War II paratrooper Adolph
Photograph courtesy of Mike Martinez
years ago, but its impact rever- berates into the present moment. To prevent Iran from obtain- ing a nuclear weapon, Air Force pilots flying a formation of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers delivered a devastating assault on that nation’s nuclear infrastructure on June 22, 2025, in a mission dubbed Operation Midnight
Hammer.
The newest bomber under-
going testing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., is the B-21 Raider. The Raider is the lat- est version strategic stealth bomber. It is named to honor the “Doolittle Raiders,” the B-25 bomber crews led by Col. Jimmy Doolittle who made the first attack on mainland Japan just months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid was called “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” and it changed the war, and the world to come.
Decades after the war’s end, historian and literature professor Paul Fussell wrote a renowned essay, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” Fussell knew war. He was cast into it as an infantry lieu- tenant and platoon leader who described the carnage vividly in his book “Wartime.”
The astonishing speed and genius harnessed in the Man- hattan Project and the B-29 Superfortress program made the bombs that killed 250,000 people at Hiroshima and Naga- saki possible. That annihilation of men, women and children ended the war.
President Harry Truman said his decision was simple, to end the war as quickly as possible.
Whose lives were saved? Among them, multitudes of additional men, women and children that Japan’s war leaders would have willingly sacrificed in defense of their home islands.
And in addition, the million Americans whose lives were estimated to be killed in an inva- sion of Japan.
Here are a few who survived because of that fateful decision by Truman. They are men and women who spent post-war years in the Antelope Valley, but they really are from “Anytown U.S.A.,” that iconic commu- nity observed in “Best Years of Our Lives,” Best Picture Acad- emy Award of 1946, directed by World War II veteran William Wyler.
Art Wallis and Art Ray were two it was our privilege to have as neighbors in our Antelope
Photograph by Dennis Anderson
World War II Marine Patricia Murray and WASP Pilot Florabelle Reece.
Photograph by Dennis Anderson
Ken Placek, World War II fighter pilot, spoke recently at Coffee4Vets.
Photograph by Reed Saxon
The late 101st Airborne D-Day vet Henry Ochsner was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2017.
Valley. When they left us in recent years, they lived past 90. And what lives they lived.
Art Wallis saw the big flag raised on Mt. Suribachi, the sum- mit on Iwo Jima that inspired World War II’s most iconic American photograph. Associ- ated Press Photographer Joe Rosenthal took the photo used to fashion the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington D.C.
Navy man Art Ray served aboard the USS Quincy, a cruiser that sent rounds flying over the D-Day beaches of Normandy. Less than a year after D-Day, with Art aboard, the Quincy car- ried President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his voyage to meet Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin at Yalta to set terms for the post-war world.
Art Ray, with thousands of
other sailors, watched from shipboard the day Gen. Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.
Ken Creese and Skip Lippert also lived here, as did Remo Cuniberti, and the late Valley Press columnist Bill Gillis, all survivors of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. Remo Cuniberti survived the sinking of the USS West Virginia. Creese was aboard the cruiser USS De- troit. Skip Lippert manned anti- aircraft with the National Guard at Schofield Barracks. Gillis, Army, went on to Guadalcanal.
The day President Roosevelt declared would “Live in Infamy” was the Sunday morning Japan
____ See VETS, on Page 12