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NEWS MyEagleNews.com Wednesday, September 2, 2020 B1 Final victory World War II, 75 years later Japan surrendered Sept. 2, 1945 By Gary A. Warner Oregon Capital Bureau I n July 1945, Leon Devereaux was a Navy ensign flying a 4JU Corsair fighter, shoot- ing down a Mitsubishi “Betty” bomber off the coast of Japan. Less than two months later, Devereaux was again on a mis- sion above Japan, flying over a battleship in Tokyo Bay. His Corsair was part of the air armada above the USS Mis- souri, where Japan was signing the documents of surrender. It was Sept. 2, 1945. The end of World War II. “That was fast — we weren’t expecting the war to be over yet,” Deveraux said. “We knew there was a hard-nosed bunch in Tokyo wanted to keep fighting.” It had been just that spring that Germany had surrendered. Still, there was one more enemy to go. The path to vic- tory over Japan was clear — but the cost of D-Day-style invasions would be long and bloody. President Harry Tru- man would say after the war that “Operation Downfall” would have lasted well into 1946 and cost up to a half-mil- lion American lives — an over- estimation, according to some post-war military historians. Then two flashes changed the timetable. The atomic bomb- ing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945 incinerated two major Japanese cities, kill- ing at least 110,000. Higher esti- mates are double the number. It would cause Emperor Hirohito to overrule military hardliners and capitulate to the Allies. Just under four years of war cost 407,316 Americans killed and 671,278 wounded. Of the 150,000 Oregonians who served, an estimated 3,800 died and more than 5,000 were wounded. While estimates vary, the death toll of military and civilians during the war was about 75 million. Marching into history Devereaux, 96, who would go on to serve as Bend’s mayor, is among the rapidly dwin- dling number of Americans for whom service in World War II isn’t something in history book, but part of their life’s memories. Of the estimated 16 mil- lion who served in World War II, less than 300,000 remain, down from more than 935,000 in just the past five years. In Oregon, just 7,300 veterans remain. Each day more than 200 veterans of the war die across the nation. Obituaries tell the toll. “After graduation from Astoria High School in 1943, he enlisted in the Navy and served his country in the Pacific Theater during World War II,” reported the Astorian on the April death of Donald Bryce Hoyer, 94, of Seaside. It’s a daily fact of life. “In Oregon, we lose three EO Media Group file photo Combat engineer training at Camp Abbot, now home to Sunriver. The camp trained 90,000 engineers during World War II. projects during the day, they would write in the evening, leading to two books of stories and poetry. Worries of a possible Jap- anese invasion of the main- land United States led to Presi- dent Franklin Roosevelt issuing Executive Order 9066 order- ing the “relocation” of Jap- anese immigrants and Japa- nese-Americans away from the West Coast. In Oregon, the Army declared all areas west of U.S. Highway 97 as Military Region 1 and ordered the relo- cation of those covered by the President’s order. Most were sent to an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho. Only a small community in the Oregon por- tion of Treasure Valley in the far southeast of the state did not have to move. Over 120,000 Japa- nese-Americans from Ore- gon, Washington and California endured relocation. “Those removed lost homes, crops, farm animals, property, bank accounts, and personal possessions,” says a history by the Oregon State Archives. Home again Contributed photo Dick Higgins Contributed photo Bob Stangier EO Media Group file photo A newspaper clipping from June 1, 1945, shows the Rev. Archie Mitchell and his wife, Elsie Mitchell, who was killed May 5, 1945, when she and five Sunday school students found a Japanese bal- loon bomb that exploded. THIS MONTH See more coverage in the Blue Mountain Eagle’s History special section Sept. 30. or four World War II veterans every day,” said Dick Tobia- son, a Vietnam veteran in Bend active in state efforts to memo- rialize World War II in Oregon. Bob Stangier was fairly cer- tain he would have added to those casualty numbers if the fighting had continued. World War II had taken him from Pendleton to Corsica, then Italy, flying 70 missions as a pilot of B-25 Mitchell bomber. His plane was badly damaged on a raid and limped home to its base in Allied-occupied Italy on one engine. When the end of the war came, Stangier was a first lieutenant at Santa Ana Army Air Base in Califor- nia, on his way to the Pacific. “I had been in combat and was apprehensive about going back,” Stangier said. “I was in the Army. They told you where to go and what to do, so I was in the pipeline to the Pacific.” “Gen. MacArthur said we could take Japan with just a few thousands of loses, but another general said we could lose a million or more,” Stang- ier said. “I had no confidence in MacArthur’s math.” That even MacArthur’s estimate was wildly high was only because of the atomic bomb, Stangier said. “I believe I am alive because of the atomic bombs,” Stangier said. “These idiots who are against it should have been in the Army in 1945.” Small state plays a big role For a state of just over 1 mil- lion people at the time, Oregon played a leading role in the his- tory of World War II. Yōsuke Matsuoka, Japan’s foreign minister who nego- tiated the 1940 alliance with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, once lived in Portland and was a 1900 graduate of the Univer- sity of Oregon Law School. Charged with war crimes, he died of tuberculosis in a Tokyo prison in 1946 before the end of his trial. Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River was the only military base on the con- tinental United States to be attacked. The Japanese subma- rine I-25 surfaced at night in June 1942 and fired 17 shells from its deck gun, blowing up the fort’s baseball field back- stop but little else. Brookings was the scene of the only enemy bombing of the war, when the same subma- rine launched a seaplane armed with incendiary bombs meant to set off a forest fire that would draw troops away from mili- tary missions. A small area was scorched, but no blaze erupted. Nubuo Fujita, the pilot, would return after the war to apolo- gize to the resident of Brook- ings, give the town his fami- Camps were built to train American servicemen — Camp Abbott on the Deschutes River south of Bend and Camp Adair north of Corvallis trained thou- sands of soldiers. The Umatilla Army Depot near Hermiston housed stored massive amounts of munitions in underground silos and bunkers. Astoria became home to the Tongue Point Naval Station. Military airfields also sprung up in Newport, North Bend, Floras Lake and Portland. • • • • Fun Golf Every Sunday Afternoon Starts at Noon w/Free Hot Dogs Men and Women Welcome- Limited to first 30 Teams Free Green Fees with Your 1st Slam - 20% off fees for County Residents thereafter • Two-Person Teams • Payouts to the Top 3 Teams each week • Optional Skins Buy-In Make sure you know and follow these school bus safety rules for motorists. It’s not only smart, it’s the law! YELLOW FLASHING LIGHTS: signal that the bus is getting ready to stop and load or unload children. Slow down and prepare to stop. • S202455-1 RED FLASHING LIGHTS WITH EXTENDED STOP ARM: signals that the bus has stopped and children will be exiting or entering the bus. Stop your vehicle and wait until the lights stop fl ashing, the extended arm is withdraw and the bus resumes movement. Sponsored by Strawberry Mountain Law, PC Attorneys Raschio, Dunn & Goebel 206 S Humbolt St. • Canyon City 541-575-5750 • www.rrlaw.biz Military moves into Oregon The most impressive mili- tary project was the two han- gars built at Tillamook Naval Air Station. Among the larg- est wood-frame buildings in the world, they housed blimps patrolling the coast to look for enemy ships and submarines. Nearly 200,000 people moved to Oregon during the war to work in defense indus- tries. Henry Kaiser’s ship- yard straddled both sides of the Columbia River, where 100,000 workers — most new to the state — built “Liberty Ship” transports and smaller escort aircraft carriers. Drawn by defense industry jobs, Ore- gon’s Black population in Port- land grew from about 2,500 in 1940 to 25,000 in 1944. The Portland Housing Authority put out a statements that “while we do not discriminate, we do segregate.” Most Black peo- ple had to live in the new Van- port development built by Kai- ser. The city was destroyed in a 1948 flood. More than 3,500 captured German military personnel were sent to eight camps in Jackson, Benton, Marion and Polk counties, with two in Mal- heur County. They were paid 80 cents per day to work, mostly in agriculture. Conscientious objectors to the war were paid nothing while working at Civil- ian Public Service Camp 56 near Waldport. While laboring on government construction SILVIES SUNDAY SLAM Yay schoo l st a r t s Septemb er 8th! As always, be alert and watch out for children whenever you are behind the wheel. ly’s samurai sword and plant a peace tree where the bombs fell. Klamath County was the site of the only American casu- alties of an enemy attack in the United States. Japan launched 9,000 balloon bombs late in the war, designed to float across the Pacific Ocean with the hope, again, of igniting forest fires. One bomb went off in Jan- uary 1945 in a rural area near Medford to no effect. But on May 8, 1945, a church group on a picnic at Leonard Creek, 13 miles northeast of Bly, found one. It blew up, killing Elsie Mitchell, 26, and five children aged 11 to 14. A memorial was erected in 1950, with Gov. Doug- las McKay saying those killed were casualties of World War II “just as surely as if they had been in uniform.” Oregon welcomed one of the first Navy ships returning from Japan, the cruiser USS Amsterdam. “We boarded our ship and headed for Okinawa to pick up wounded and dead Marines and moved them to Astoria, Oregon, which threw a festive welcome,” recalled Anthony Galli, a Navy veteran from Pennington, New Jersey, in a recent essay for Cen- tralJersey.com. Dick Higgins of Bend doesn’t remember much about how he was celebrating the Vic- tory of Japan while training sail- ors in Florida. It had been a long war for him — he had been there from the minute it began for the United States: Sunday morn- ing, Dec. 7, 1941, when bombs started raining down around him on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. Higgins recalled he looked up in the sky and saw unfamiliar planes with “meatballs” painted on their wings — the red circle of the Japanese planes. A radioman on a Navy PBY flying boat, he fought his way across the Dutch East Indies and other spots. “Sand bars and bug flats,” Higgins, 99, recalled of some days’ destinations. Eventually sent stateside to use his combat experience to train the thousands of sailors being rushed to the fight on both sides of the war, Higgins would eventually serve just under 30 years in the Navy. Though he has plenty of memories of World War II, Hig- gins says he isn’t quite done. He’s regularly gone back to Pearl Harbor to mark the sacri- fice of the soldiers, sailors and Marines he knew. He’s even met with Japanese veterans of the attack, who came in a spirit of reconciliation between the peo- ple of the two nations. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. “I’ll be 100, but I’m going back,” Higgins said. Optional Stay for Dinner at $45. Begins Sunday, August 30th at 12:00PM Call to Reserve your Spot! 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