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At noon on Wednesday, August 15, 1945,
Japan heard something unbelievable. Hirohito, the 124th Japanese Emperor
and considered a deity, announced his country's surrender in a recorded
radio address. This was the first time the Japanese people had heard their
Emperor's voice. In the United States, where it was Tuesday, August 14,
the news trickled out slowly and cautiously, and was met with equal disbelief.
When the reality set in, jubilation swept the country, spilling into the
streets from Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard and continuing the next
day. As it had so often during the war, Columbia's news headquarters offered
round-the-clock coverage and live remotes. In this report from Hollywood,
along with the unchecked joy and celebration, the reporters encounter
a wide range of hopes and dreams for post-war life, from loud ties to
the end of fascism. Read a Text Transcription.
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In stark contrast to the carousing denizens
of Hollywood, V-J Day celebrations in President Truman's hometown of Independence,
Missouri, had a distinctly all-American flavor. KMBC's John Cameron Swayze,
reporting across the street from Truman's "summer White House"
at 219 North Delaware, described a scene replete with families out for
a stroll, kids on bicycles, and a white kitten, with true abandon limited
to car horns and the occasional firecracker. This August 14, 1945, broadcast
was a part of Columbia's continuous coverage of world celebrations on
the eve of peace.
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Despite Allied victory, shadows of loss
and insecurity lingered on the home front. Even as Americans basked in
triumph, and celebratory broadcasts filled the airwaves, euphoria remained
tempered by sorrow: For every soldier joyously welcomed home, there remained
a father, son, brother, or neighbor who would never return, and a changed
world with an uncertain future. Ernie Pyle, the beloved frontline correspondent
killed in the Pacific less than five months earlier, captured the bittersweet
postwar atmosphere in this column which was featured on a September 2,
1945, victory special. Fittingly, Pyle's words are introduced by Pulitzer
Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, and read by Bob Hope, who brought
the home front to soldiers around the world. Mauldin, an Army recruit
who began cartooning for his division newspaper, gained fame through one
of Pyle's columns and went on to communicate the human face of war through
his drawings much as Pyle did through his writing.
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When peace finally dawned, the world
awoke to lost innocence. A world-weary seriousness, further fueled by
growing cold-war uncertainty, seeped into literature, music, and film,
rivaling the flag-waving, stiff-upper-lip stoicism that dominated the
home-front during the war. Though sanitized combat pictures and happy-go-lucky
comedies were popular with post-war moviegoers, a new breed of darker,
grittier films soon rivaled them at the box-office. Dubbed film noir for
their shadowy imagery as well as the darkness of their plots and characters,
these films reflected the cynicism and doubt that colored the post-war
world. Soon, for every courageous Marine storming the beach on the silver
screen, there was a hardboiled private eye stumbling through a grim city
of shadows.
The airwaves also changed: Now battling movies as well as a new medium
called television for Americans' attentions, radio's days as an entertainment
leader were numbered. By decade's end, the networks would shrink, and
the airwaves would be dominated by news, music, and local programming.
Radio's uncomfortable future is clear in this August 2, 1947, episode
of "The Adventures of Ellery Queen." As the action unfolds between
archaic organ fills, the previously polished, urbane detective, affecting
an ill-fitting tough-guy image, battles a lingering Nazi menace with vague
cold-war implications. Within a year, this once-popular program would
be cancelled.
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Winning
the Home Front
thankfulness.
On the home front, where the previous four years had been an emotional lurch
from doubt to dread to delight and back again, jubilation was tempered with
sorrow and somber reflection, and a measure of uncertainty remained. The Second
World War had wrought countless changes, and now, as the Axis lay shattered
and radio flooded nearly every home with news, updates, commentary, and speculation
about what lie ahead, war's end held nearly as much uncertainty as the dark
days of the late 1930s.
