Quonset hosted thousands of troops who built Quonset huts and trained engineers and Seabees to work on ships. Newport was home to the Atlantic destroyer fleet, where thousands of sailors trained for service abroad. From Westerly to Woonsocket and everywhere in between, Rhode Island was focused on winning what has become known as, in Studs Terkel’s famous words, “The Good War.” If ever a state was at the center of the American war effort in World War II, it was Rhode Island. Sandra Barone pushed to rename it “Rhode Island Veteran’s Day” or “Peace and Remembrance Day.” At one point the Rhode Island Japan Society hired lawyers to press a case against the name, and in 1990 lawmakers passed a resolution saying “Victory Day is not a day to express satisfaction in the destruction and death caused by nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Ed DiPrete tried to transform it into Governor’s Bay Day, and former Barrington Rep. Japanese officials said Victory Day was harming trade between the two nations, and a local Chamber of Commerce official called the holiday “embarrassing.” But by the mid-1980s – with Japan’s economic might growing – there was a lively debate about whether it should be scrapped. ![]() The holiday was established here in 1948, three years after World War II ended. 14 deserves special attention for its interplay of state, local, national, and even international politics,” Len Travers writes in the “Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days.” Indeed, as far back as 1957 The New York Times reported that what it called “V-J Day” was “always a big legal holiday in Rhode Island.” “The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. ![]() Rhode Island has been on its own since 1975, when Arkansas dropped the holiday – which it had already rechristened as “World War II Memorial Day” – and reportedly gave state workers their birthdays off as a consolation. ![]() (And yes, the official legal name of the holiday in Rhode Island is Victory Day, not V-J Day.) Monday is the 67th annual Victory Day in Rhode Island, keeping the state as the only one to still observe a legal holiday that marks Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. (WPRI) – Like Del’s, Victory Day is a uniquely Rhode Island tradition.
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