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USS Intrepid was commissioned on August 16, 1943, joining the U.S. Navy in the middle of World War II. For the next two years the ship and crew trained, fitted out and fought their way across the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, the contributions the ship and crew made to victory were vital and the price they paid was high. Travel with our Museum tour guides here each month as they follow Intrepid’s journey and its crew’s experience throughout World War II.
August and September 1945: Victory. . . Now What?
On August 16, 1945, Intrepid’s crew gathered together to celebrate an important milestone—the ship’s second birthday. Exactly two years earlier, their ship had joined the U.S. Navy in the middle of the deadliest conflict in human history. Celebration of this second anniversary carried special significance: just one day earlier, the fighting had come to an end.
Japan’s announcement of surrender on August 15 didn’t come as a surprise to the men of Intrepid. Ever since the second atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, Intrepid and other ships anchored at Eniwetok were alive with rumors about ongoing negotiations. Official confirmation finally came just after eleven in the morning on August 15, in the form of an order from Adm. Chester Nimitz directing the ships and sailors of the U.S. Pacific Fleet to “cease offensive operations against Japan.” The day they had hoped for, prayed for and fought for had finally come.
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Reactions among Intrepid’s crew varied. For some, the immediate response was utter disbelief, despite all the rumors they had heard. In his memoir, fighter pilot Roy Erickson tells the story of Ens. “Boots” Liles who upon hearing of the surrender ran back to his squadron’s bunkroom and announced at the top of his lungs to the sleeping pilots, “Hey! Wake up! The Japs have surrendered! The war is over! The war is over!”
He was rebuffed by his fellow pilots: “Shut up, Liles! Get the hell out of here and let us get some sleep.”
As Erickson explains, “Boots had cried wolf once too often.”
His fellow pilots may not have gotten any more sleep that morning, given the chaotic jubilation that ensued. James Smith recalls, “The whole ship shook, not as much as when the torpedo hit it, but man you could hear people hollerin’ and screamin’.” For Smith, the experience was a very happy one. Surrounded by other crew members, Smith describes friends and strangers alike hugging one another, reveling in a shared sense of elation mixed with relief. “Man, when we heard about that…‘We’re all gonna get to go home,’ you know. Yeah, we’s all pretty happy bunch.”
For others, the experience was quieter and a cause for reflection. Alone on the empty hangar deck, Eugene Jones heard the onboard announcement about the surrender. Instead of hugging strangers, Jones burst into tears. As he later explained, “The elation and the cheering, and it was vocal all over the ship. I just happened to be by myself, and it hit me differently.”
As the day wore on, Intrepid received other messages, including a congratulatory message from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, shown below:
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Joseph Barry, the radio operator who volunteered to take the message down, felt a profound sense of the moment’s significance in history and his part in it. The feeling was so strong that sometime later, Barry pocketed the message as a memento and held on to it for the next 70 years. During Intrepid’s 70th commissioning anniversary celebration, he donated it to the Intrepid Museum.
Yet for all the emotions and memories tied to August 15, 1945, at that point the war was not yet over, nor could Intrepid head home. After spending a week waiting for further orders at Eniwetok, Intrepid finally linked up with the Third Fleet off Japan on August 21. From there the carrier joined the Seventh Fleet as it sailed into the Yellow Sea. Allied leaders were concerned that Japanese forces still on the ground in China and Korea might not honor the surrender agreement. Intrepid’s show of force was meant to intimidate and if necessary enforce compliance.
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On September 2, 1945, as Allied and Japanese representatives met in Tokyo Bay to sign the instrument of surrender, aircraft from Intrepid flew in the sky over Shanghai, China, and the surrounding region. Far below the citizens of Shanghai were in the midst of their own victory celebration. A few Intrepid fighter pilots remember watching as Japanese flags were replaced by American and Chinese flags far below. By the morning of September 3, the Tokyo Bay ceremony was over and Japan’s surrender was official. Yet practically speaking, very little had changed—Intrepid remained on patrol and occupation duty throughout the fall of 1945. Though the war was finally over, the ship and crew were still far from home
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