The National World War II Museum estimates fewer than 3,000 Rhode Island veterans who served in the war are still alive, down from 8,000 in 2010 and 26,000 in 2000.) (With Japan’s surrender now more than 70 years in the past – almost as far from today as the Civil War was from Pearl Harbor – the living ranks of those veterans are dwindling fast. Pat Conley, the state’s historian laureate. About 92,000 of the state’s residents served in the war – more than one in ten – and almost 2,200 of them were killed, according to Dr. There’s no question that World War II had an enormous impact on Rhode Island. “I don’t think they have any right to tell us they don’t like V-J Day because we won the war.” “Who did the attacking, them or us?” Rene Bobola, a World War II veteran, asked a reporter a few years later. It’s also often been noted that Japan, not the U.S., started the war by bombing Pearl Harbor. “Should we stop celebrating the Fourth of July because it offends the English?” demanded a VFW official in 1988. Still, protests from veterans and traditionalists have always won out over efforts to jettison the holiday some have linked it with Rhode Island’s status as the first state to declare independence in 1776. The Rhode Island AFL-CIO argued successfully that turning it into a floating holiday would be disrespectful to veterans. Ed DiPrete tried to transform Victory Day into Governor’s Bay Day, and one lawmaker pushed to rename it “Rhode Island Veteran’s Day” or “Peace and Remembrance Day.” At one point the Rhode Island Japan Society hired lawyers to press a case against the name, and in 1990 lawmakers passed a resolution saying “Victory Day is not a day to express satisfaction in the destruction and death caused by nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”Īnother more recent push to eliminate Victory Day, in 2013, failed despite lobbying by businesses who said they wanted more flexibility in scheduling workers’ hours. Japanese officials said it was harming trade between the two nations, and a local Chamber of Commerce official called the holiday “embarrassing.” However, by the mid-1980s – with Japan’s economic might growing – there was a lively debate about whether Victory Day should be scrapped. Rhode Island was always an outlier: in 1953, the AP described it as “the only state in the union that voted to make V-J a legal holiday,” though two years later the news service acknowledged, “Arkansas celebrates the anniversary also, but as World War II Memorial Day.” Victory Day was established here by lawmakers in the spring of 1948, three years after World War II ended. Sailors in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii celebrate news of Japan’s surrender in August 1945. 14 deserves special attention for its interplay of state, local, national, and even international politics,” Len Travers writes in the “Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days.” As far back as the 1950s, The New York Times declared that the holiday – which it called “V-J Day” – was “always a big legal holiday in Rhode Island.” “The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. (And yes, the official legal name of the holiday in Rhode Island is Victory Day, not “V-J Day,” despite what many residents think.)Įxperts say Rhode Island has been on its own since 1975, when Arkansas dropped its version of the holiday – dubbed “World War II Memorial Day” there – and reportedly gave state workers their birthdays off as a consolation. Monday is the 68th annual Victory Day in Rhode Island, making the state still the only one to observe a legal holiday marking Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. (WPRI) – Like Del’s, Victory Day is a uniquely Rhode Island tradition.
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