08/14/2026
On August 14, 1945, Americans received the news they had waited nearly four years to hear: Japan had accepted the Allied terms of surrender. World War II was coming to an end.
President Harry S. Truman announced the news via radio from the White House that evening, setting off celebrations across the nation.
Oklahoma celebrated too.
The next edition of the Tulsa Daily World carried the enormous headline “JAPS SURRENDER; M’ARTHUR RULER” and reported that Tulsa went “wild” when word of the surrender reached the city. The language of the headline reflects the wartime language of 1945, but the emotion behind the page is unmistakable: the war was finally ending.
The announcement followed some of the most consequential days of the Pacific War. Atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, while the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan. On August 15 in Japan, Emperor Hirohito addressed his nation by radio and announced acceptance of the Allied terms.
The surrender would be formally signed on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
For millions of American families, however, August 14 was the day everything changed.
After years of deployments, casualty reports, rationing, letters from overseas and uncertainty, families could finally begin to hope that their sons, daughters, husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters and friends would soon be coming home.
For many families, there would be no homecoming.
More than 400,000 American service members gave their lives during World War II. Countless others returned home carrying wounds and memories that stayed with them for the rest of their lives.
Eighty-one years later, V-J Day remains more than a celebration of victory. It is a day to remember the service, sacrifice and extraordinary cost paid by the generation that saw the Second World War through to its end.
Today, VFW Post 4446 remembers and honors them.
