WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: Prisoners of War
September 4, 1945

To Private Luther D. Bass and the hundreds of other Allied survivors of Tokyo POW Camp #8B, time must have seemed like it slowed to a crawl in early September 1945. Bass and many of his fellow prisoners of war had been captives of the Japanese for over three years, suffering hunger and forced labor. Now the war was over and they had been evacuated to the town of Onahoma to await liberation. Yet it would take several days for American forces to reach Onahoma. How had Bass survived his captivity, and how would he and his fellow POWs endure their anxious wait for liberation? Read More

WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Formal Surrender of Japan
September 2, 1945

It is Sunday, September 2. Some 280 Allied warships and thousands of troops are staged in Tokyo Bay. On the deck of one vessel, the battleship USS Missouri, General Douglas MacArthur and 50 other Allied leaders are assembled. It is not a battle they have prepared for, however, but a brief ceremony. The men aboard the Missouri are about to witness Japan’s formal surrender. Read More

WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: Japan Surrenders
President Truman’s News Conference
August 14, 1945

THE PRESIDENT. [reading]: I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese Government–

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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Bombing of Nagasaki
August 9, 1945

Visitors to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum can view a unique artifact that speaks to the revolutionary power and danger of the weapon that destroyed Nagasaki and helped end World War II.
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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Bombing of Hiroshima
August 6, 1945

At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber opened its bay doors over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and released a solitary bomb. Forty-four seconds later, it exploded 1,900 feet above the city. This single explosion brought the Second World War into its final phase and revealed to the world a new and devastating weapon.
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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Potsdam Declaration
July 26, 1945

By July 1945, Japan was defeated nearly everywhere except in the hearts and minds of the Japanese. Even as the Japanese Empire crumbled and the suffering Japanese prepared for invasion, military leaders reminded their people that national honor prohibited surrender to the Allies.
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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Potsdam Conference
July 17, 1945

What do you do when you’re about to win a war and your mightiest ally seems just as dangerous as your enemies?
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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The Trinity Test
July 16, 1945

At 5:29 AM on July 16, 1945, an enormous explosion rocked the bleak desert of southern New Mexico. The cause of the blast was a device called the Gadget, which exploded with the force of forty million pounds of TNT. It produced intense heat, a light brighter than the sun, and a mushroom cloud 7.5 miles high that glowed yellow, then red, then purple. People felt the shockwave 100 miles from ground zero, and newspapers reported that a blind woman 150 miles away asked: “What’s that brilliant light?”
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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: How Children Helped Win the War
July 5, 1945

World War II was a total war. Those who were not soldiers were mobilized to some degree. They conserved, raised money, boosted soldiers’ morale, worked in war manufacturing, and contributed to the war effort in countless other ways. Even young people participated in the war effort.

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WWII highlights from the Truman Library’s archives and collections

Marching to Victory: The United Nations
June 26, 1945

Popular depictions of World War II concentrate on paratroopers, goose-stepping Nazis, Holocaust victims, tanks, aircraft carriers, and other symbols of the world at arms and the deaths of millions of people.

But violence was not the war’s only legacy.

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