Sixty-eight years ago Monday, Gen. Douglas MacArthur stood on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor and received the formal surrender of Japan. World War II was over.
The previous May 8, Germany had surrendered and Americans celebrated V-E Day, Victory in Europe. Now Americans celebrated V-J Day, Victory over Japan, pouring into the streets, with horns blaring, factory whistles shrieking, and churches filled.
Since then, we have known plenty of wars, but no V-K Day, V-V Day, V-I Day or V-A Day, marking conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why? What changed?
For one thing, people grow war weary. U.S. participation in World War II lasted three years and eight months. By contrast, Iraq, was fought for eight years and nine months. Afghanistan has gone on for 11 years and though winding down still continues.
Further, the scale of warfare has changed. V-E Day ended a conflict fought between massive, uniformed armies, with enemies easily identified and battles clearly demarked: Normandy, Anzio, The Bulge, Berlin.
Since then, we have fought diffuse wars with lines so porous and ill-defined as to present conflict without fronts. And they end, or drag on, in ambiguous victory, stalemate, even defeat.
Their battles are remembered by those who fought and bled in them — Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, Hamburger Hill and Hue in Vietnam, Falujah in Iraq, Kandahar and Kunduz in Afghanistan — but recalled by few others.
Further, World War II became personal to almost every American family,
With 16 million servicemen in uniform and deaths exceeding 400,000, almost every family was touched one way or another. In 1945, one American in every eight was in uniform, 12 percent of the population.
Today that figure is well under 1 percent. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are heaped with praise and deservedly honored. Yet, if 100 Americans on the street are asked, the majority would be unable to name a single man or woman fighting in those wars.
World War II permeated the popular culture. Most people could sing or at least hum the songs the war inspired: "I'll Walk Alone," "Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree," and for both sides, "Lili Marlene."
Nothing stirring, nostalgic or as lasting has come out of the wars of the last half century. Bob Dylan's haunting "Blowin' in the Wind" evokes the madness of war, not a celebration of victory.
Most movies produced during World War II were naked propaganda, often corny: "The Story of GI Joe," "Back to Bataan," "Pride of the Marines." But even the classics, "Casablanca" and "Mrs. Miniver," stirred patriotic sentiments.
Movies of recent conflicts have a bitter edge. They may be artistically admirable, but divide rather than unite. Vietnam movies have been gritty, ruthless explorations of horror fought in a moral quagmire. "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket" movies would scarcely spur enlistments or chest thumping.
The Cold War did mark an epic triumph for the West. But the rivalry had dragged on for 40 years and the end seemed to unravel rather than mark a date to remember. We observed no V-SU Day for victory over the Soviet Union.
We celebrated V-E Day and V-J Day because there was something monumental to celebrate. Germany's vaunted Wehrmact, judged by some historians as the greatest fighting machine of the 20th century, lay trampled in the dust and the murderous regime it served surrendered unconditionally.
Japan, perpetrator of Pearl Harbor, was crushed just as ignominiously. That is how we want wars to end, with the champ holding his fist high over his head and his opponent laying prostrate at his feet. The turbulent and fragmented post-colonial world seems to have rendered such victories obsolete.
The only way that the unity and shared sacrifice the country experienced in World War II could be replicated would be to undergo again a conflagration on that scale. And the price for that conflict is beyond imagining — 50 million lives lost worldwide.
Joseph E. Persico is an historian and author of "Roosevelt's Centurions: FDR and the Commanders He Led to Victory in World War II."