THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 11, 1995 TAG: 9508090190
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines
VICTORY IN EUROPE had been celebrated, but the tension still mounted during the summer of 1945 as the front pages of The Portsmouth Star carried daily updates on the war in the Pacific.
Headlines proclaimed battle victories and inside stories kept readers informed on the whereabouts and heroics of Portsmouth's sons.
But there was no doubt that until Japan surrendered, local residents would join people around the world in prayer and in unswerving support of their country.
Portsmouth people were buying war bonds so fast that a July story reported that bank officials had announced a shortage of bank safety deposit boxes in the city, a bank service most ordinary citizens had not used before, according to the report.
And there were other sacrifices for the war effort.
Like others across America, Portsmouth residents were dealing with rationing and shortages of everything from food and clothes to ice.
And, of course, housing.
The influx of shipyard workers forever changed the face of Portsmouth.
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard's employment peaked during World War II at 43,000, according to shipyard records.
At one time, about 1,500 people were living in a trailer camp at Alexander's Corner, then in Norfolk County, while the government and city rushed to construct homes for the swelling population.
And the shipyard activity was a constant reminder of the realities of war.
The shipyard built 30 major vessels, including three aircraft carriers, and repaired 6,850, according to shipyard records.
Downtown was filled to overflowing with the large numbers of servicemen stationed here between battles. They filled the taverns on Crawford Street. They showed up in droves at the South Street USO, where local young women as members of the Girls' Service Organization worked daily to make sure young men miles away from home felt there was a friendly face and a comforting welcome.
By Aug. 10, those men - some probably wondering if their next battle would be their last - joined other Portsmouth citizens hanging onto every newspaper or radio report that Japan was close to surrender.
``Dear Bill,'' a weekly letter penned to all hometown servicemen from The Portsmouth Star, reported that ``people here took the new atomic bomb quietly, fearfully, wondering future results if it should fall in unscrupulous hands.''
``As for Russia entering against Japan, the news was received with loud cheers and comments to the effect that it was about time,'' the letter continued.
On the growing anticipation of Japan's surrender, the newspaper letter reported, ``most people would rather wait for the official announcement from the President before getting overexcited. I might say though that everyone is very, very happy.''
Those hopes naturally fanned rumors that turned out to be false.
On Aug. 13, a newspaper headline reported that a false radio broadcast on surrender had set off ``premature celebration'' across the country the night before.
Among the hordes of mistaken revelers, ``a philanthropic bar-keeper in Battle Creek, Mich., had poured out $32 worth of drinks `on the house' before he learned there was no occasion for it.''
Portsmouth did not sleep through that false report either.
According to a local story, it ``set off a premature victory celebration in Portsmouth as crowds thronged High Street and automobile horns and ship and train whistles joined in a dissonant chorus of celebration.''
According to an editorial writer, ``the effect was electrifying. All the pent-up emotions of nearly four years of war found release in that brief moment of joyous relief before the people learned that the surrender report was false.''
The rehearsal did not dampen their expectancy.
Reporter Jeune Thomas described the mood as the city waited for official news:
``Throngs crowded around street radios from 9 a.m. on, eagerly devouring news bulletins.
``Inside restaurants and shops customers were almost silent except for an occasional remark during station identification or other pauses in news broadcasts.''
Thomas reported that ``churches for the most part were experiencing a larger number of visitors as mothers, wives, sweethearts and returning servicemen knelt to offer thanks for the long-awaited victory.
``One returning veteran when asked his opinion on the end of the war and how it would affect him said now he would be looking forward to a good peacetime job and the task of settling down to a good American life.
``He added that not until the majority of the boys had to fight for their country and see life as it was in other lands, did they realize what a good thing we all have here, and how important it is to preserve it.
``One war mother almost wept at the question of what the end of the war would mean to her. She reported that her youngest son had been in the service for three years and had not been home on furlough. Her other son was injured in action while flying over France, and was recently discharged after spending almost a year in a foreign hospital.''
PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT of the surrender finally came at 7 p.m. Aug. 14.
The Portsmouth Star reported the news in extras and in this account that greeted citizens waking up the next day:
The ``deep blast of the Portsmouth Norfolk County ferries soon mingled with the shrill sound of fire sirens and chiming of downtown church bells. Automobile horns, firecrackers, cow bells, tin horns and chattering voices added to the general confusion and noise.''
Within minutes, Kit Hardy wrote, ``hundreds of jubilant sailors, Marines and war workers suddenly appeared as by magic.''
People read The Portsmouth Star's extras and ``later converted (them) into confetti'' which snowed over downtown that night.
Hardy described the celebration as ``New Year's Eve, Halloween and Circus Day all rolled into one.''
``But for everyone, from war mothers to youngsters, it was most of all a day of Thanksgiving,'' she wrote.
Many, she reported, headed for churches.
A column by W. Blount Darden gave his view of the celebration:
``. . . High Street was just a mass of milling automobiles, dashing up and down four abreast with horns tooting and sirens screaming and every occupant of every car shouting their joy at top lung capacity. Those who had no cars started a long queue of snake dances winding in and out of the moving cars. .
Patriotic music was provided from an amplifier outside the Morris Music Shop, he wrote.
``The mass of humanity just kept singing and shouting as they marched and counter-marched up one side of High Street and down the other. It was a funny sight to see one fellow, a civilian, take it upon himself to lead the parade of sailors and soldiers, but since he assumed command, nobody objected.''
But, the ``funniest sight,'' Darden reported, was a ``portly built sailor who had discarded his regulation cap and was wearing a civilian stiff brim straw hat. Taking the middle of the street, this happy individual strolled all alone and just as majestically as though he were a state dignitary receiving the plaudits of an admiring populace, tipping his hat, first to the right and then to the left and bowing most graciously. The crowd got the idea and began applauding him, some shouting as he passed, `Long Live the King,' to which which greeting he bowed himself almost to the ground.''
By 11:30 that night, the crowd grew subdued and ended up standing before a flag at St. Paul's Catholic Church singing ``God Bless America'' and the national anthem, Darden wrote.
``With this ceremony over, the group silently dissolved into the night with the Stars and Stripes proudly swinging in the breeze in front of the granite cross in the church yard.'' ILLUSTRATION: ON THE COVER
Norfolk Naval Shipyard Museum photo
The Shangri-La sails off to war framed by a drydock of the Norfolk
Naval Shipyard following the launching ceremony.
Portsmouth Public Library photos
Shipyard workers wait for the bus outside the Fourth Street gate
during the war (1944).
Downtown was bustling during World War II with lots of navy men
flocking to High Street.
This local wartime USO photo shows servicemen dancing with the USO's
Girls Service Organization.
The young women dancing in the cover photo include, from front of
the line to the back, Norma Hunt, Alice Coyne Hanes, Margaret Sykes
Lingle and Kit Hardy, a reporter for The Portsmouth Star. Farther
down the line, the two young women wearing identical striped gowns
were twins, Martha Schools Byrd and Margaret Schools Hardin. Some of
the dancers could not be identified.
Photo from PORTSMOUTH PUBLIC LIBRARY
Shipyard workers lived in this trailer camp at Alexander's Corner
during World War II.
Staff photo by JIM WALKER
Alice Hanes, right, now curator of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard
Museum, was a member of the USO Girls Service Organization, pictured
above. The other members she was able to identify are, front row:
Martha Schools Byrd, left, (Hanes), Margaret Sykes Lingle and Norma
Hunt; back row: Margaret Schools Hardin, from left, Rose Everton
Piland, chaperone Mrs. V.J. Schools, an unidentified chaperone,
Virginia Morris, chaperone Elizabeth Wingfield and Ann Bunkley.
KEYWORDS: WORLD WAR II
by CNB