Victory Day has commemorated the anniversary of Japan's surrender to the Allies in 1945 which ended
World War II. The atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6 and
Nagasaki on August 9, and the Soviet Union's invasion of Manchuria in the previous week led to the eventual surrender. President Truman's announcement of the surrender started mass celebrations across the United States, which was when he declared September 2 as the official "VJ Day" in 1945. In 1975, the holiday was abolished at the Arkansas state level leaving Rhode Island as the only state in the U.S. where the holiday is a legal holiday. Rhode Island has observed this day since 1948. Initially observed on August 14, the
Rhode Island General Assembly enacted legislation in 1966 to observe the holiday on the second Monday in August annually. According to
WPRI-TV, Rhode Island has had debates over whether to retain the state holiday, with opponents citing Japan's growing "economic might" in the 1980s and offense to
Japanese Americans, but all efforts to remove or rename the holiday have been defeated by
veterans, "traditionalists", and
labor unions. ==See also==