Japan was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II from the surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, at the war's end until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect on April 28, 1952. The occupation, led by the American military with support from the British Commonwealth and under the supervision of the Far Eastern Commission, involved a total of nearly one million Allied soldiers. The occupation was overseen by the US General Douglas MacArthur, who was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers by the US President Harry S. Truman; MacArthur was succeeded as supreme commander by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951. Unlike in the occupations of Germany and Austria, the Soviet Union had little to no influence in Japan, declining to participate because it did not want to place Soviet troops under MacArthur's direct command.
Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV was an American army general and the Commander of Allied forces in the Philippines at the time Japan surrendered to the United States, during World War II.
Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period.
Harold John Avery Russell was an American World War II veteran. After losing his hands during his military service, Russell was cast in the epic drama film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was the first non-professional actor to win an Academy Award for acting and the first Oscar recipient to sell his award.
Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW) is an American congressionally chartered fraternal organization that carries out activities to preserve the history and legacy of the United States Armed Forces veterans who fought during the Civil War. It is the legal successor to the Grand Army of the Republic, the large and influential grouping of Union Army veterans that existed in the decades following the Civil War. Most SUVCW activities occur at the "Camp" or local community level. Camps are grouped into state or regional structures called "Departments". The National organization, with headquarters at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, meets annually in a National Encampment that is attended by SUVCW members, known as "Brothers", from all Camps and Departments.
Ulysses Simpson Grant III was a United States Army officer and planner. He was the son of Frederick Dent Grant, and the grandson of General of the Army and American President Ulysses S. Grant.
George Baker was a cartoonist who became prominent during World War II as the creator of the popular comic strip The Sad Sack.
Sad Sack is an American comic strip and comic book character created by Sgt. George Baker during World War II. Set in the United States Army, Sad Sack depicted an otherwise unnamed, lowly private experiencing some of the absurdities and humiliations of military life. The so-called "unnamed private" was actually Ben Schnall, a true-life private in the US Army during World War II, member of Yank magazine and good curmudgeonly friend of Sgt. George Baker. The title was a euphemistic shortening of the military slang "sad sack of shit", common during World War II. The phrase has come to mean "an inept person" or "inept soldier".
The United States Code is the official compilation of the Federal laws of a general and permanent nature that are currently in force. Title 36 cover, "Patriotic and National Observances, Ceremonies, and Organizations."
Harry S. Truman's tenure as the 33rd president of the United States began on April 12, 1945, upon the death of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ended on January 20, 1953. He had been vice president for only 82 days when he succeeded to the presidency. Truman, a Democrat from Missouri, ran for and won a full four-year term in the 1948 presidential election, in which he narrowly defeated Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey and Dixiecrat nominee Strom Thurmond. Although exempted from the newly ratified Twenty-second Amendment, Truman did not run for a second full term in the 1952 presidential election because of his low popularity. He was succeeded by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
This is the service summary of Douglas MacArthur, a General in the United States Army, who began his career in 1903 as a second lieutenant and served in three major military conflicts, going on to hold the highest military offices of both the United States and the Philippines.
The Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) is a U.S non-profit organization that was established to "help veterans and their families meet and overcome the challenges of blindness".
The Legion of Valor of the United States of America, commonly known as the Legion of Valor, is a war veterans' organization created to promote patriotic allegiance, fidelity to the United States Constitution, and popular support for civil liberties and the permanence of free institutions. Membership is open to recipients of the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and the Air Force Cross.
On 11 April 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands after MacArthur made public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who was then commander of United Nations Command forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil–military relations.
The World Veterans Federation (WVF) is the world's largest international veteran organisation. The federation consists of 172 veterans organizations from 121 countries representing some 60 million veterans worldwide.
The Women's Overseas Service League (WOSL) is a non-governmental organization based in the United States. It was founded in May 1921 to provide financial support and relationships for and between servicewomen who returned from World War I to no benefits, unlike their male counterparts.
The following events occurred in December 1945:
The Military Order of the World War was created in 1919 at the suggestion of General of the Armies John J. Pershing as a fraternity for American military officers coming out of the Great War. Two decades later, when the USA became involved in WWII the organization name was pluralized to its current title of Military Order of the World Wars. Though the Order's title has not changed since 1945, it remains an officers’ society welcoming new qualified members in current military service, retired military service, or former military service and has members from the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq, and peacetime service.
The history of The American Legion, a U.S. war veterans' organization headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, began in Paris, France, March 15 to 17, 1919, by a thousand commissioned officers and enlisted men, delegates from all the units of the American Expeditionary Forces to an organization caucus meeting, which adopted a tentative constitution and selected the name "American Legion." It was subsequently chartered by the 66th U.S. Congress on September 16, 1919.
