Postwar Days #2 - August 15, 1945 Part 2

A famous radio broadcast, and a more famous photograph

There were two John Smiths, both Americans. Well, there were many more John Smiths than that – it was an archtypical name in that country, in honour of the celebrated pedophile of colonial myth. But there are two that concern us here. One heard the news of the surrender in the middle of the night in a west German hamlet. The other heard it on the evening of August 14, in a Los Angeles bar.

You may have guessed by now that the John Smiths were not real in precisely the same way that Harry Truman and Hirohito were real. They are, like Sarah Murphy and Charlie Hughes, representative figures, which is to say that they are unlike any person that has ever lived. They have been created by the author for the purposes of imagining the experience of ordinary people in a time he has not lived through. They are intended to be typical.

But no one really believes themselves to be typical. The John Smith in Germany would say that he is exceptional in his love for his fiancee Jane, in his fanaticism for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and in his cartooning ability. As for the John Smith in Los Angeles, he is black, and as such it is very hard for him to think of himself as a typical American.

The white John Smith had joined the army on the day after Pearl Harbor, and he had joined it for one reason: to kill Japs. He couldn’t stand the idea that those bucktoothed sun-worshippers thought enough of themselves to attack America. There were the other reasons, of course – he was out of a job and had no idea how he would pay for his promised wedding with Jane – but it was hatred that made him sign those papers.