![]() ![]() The local manufacturing industry also went into overdrive, supplying everything from ships and blankets to medals. ![]() “During World War II, Rhode Island was an armed camp,” Christian McBurney and Brian Wallin argue in a recent book about the state during the war. Bush - all did some of their training in the state. ![]() The Navy had a huge presence in Rhode Island during the conflict, and three future presidents - John F. “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,” veteran political reporter Scott MacKay wrote in a 2010 essay. Patrick Conley, the state’s historian laureate. About 92,000 Rhode Islanders served in the war – more than one out of every 10 residents – and almost 2,200 of them were killed, according to Dr. Indeed, the rationale may have seemed obvious considering how much the war had affected Rhode Island. 14, 1948, notes the first annual Victory Day. Republican Majority Leader William Thompson said that while there “may be merit” to the economic concerns about creating another holiday, “we certainly can set aside a day to honor the men who won the greatest war in history.”Īn article in the Cranston Herald edition of Aug. ![]() The editorialists’ argument fell on deaf ears in the Senate, and the upper chamber passed the measure creating Victory Day the following year. (Congress did just that at the federal level in 1954, rechristening Armistice Day as Veterans Day.) It suggested combining the holiday for World War II with Armistice Day, Nov. “Every day added to the list we now have imposes a very serious handicap on industry, by increasing its costs, decreasing its production, and making it more difficult than ever for it to survive in competition with industries in other States that have fewer holidays,” The Journal warned. But not everyone liked the idea: The Providence Journal’s editorial board argued Rhode Island lawmakers should cancel an existing holiday rather than add a ninth in the form of Victory Day. Veterans groups had been pushing for a World War II holiday since as early as 1946, the year after the war ended, and Windsor’s bill had initially passed the House in March 1947 with bipartisan support. (The legislature changed the law in the late 1960s to set the holiday as the second Monday in August.) Richard Windsor, a long-serving East Providence Republican, to designate Aug. Rhode Island established Victory Day in March 1948, almost three years after the end of World War II, when the General Assembly passed a bill sponsored by Rep. 14 deserves special attention for its interplay of state, local, national, and even international politics.” Senate report on the topic.Īs far back as the 1950s, The New York Times wrote that Victory Day – which the paper, like many news outlets then and now, referred to as “V-J Day” – was “always a big legal holiday in Rhode Island.” Author Len Travers, in his “Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days,” remarks: “The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. (Arkansas state employees were given their own birthdays off.) While some websites claim Victory Day used to be a federal holiday, too, that appears to be a myth – there is no mention of it in an authoritative 1999 U.S. 14 commemoration, which had been adopted back in 1949, according to state historian David Ware. Rhode Island has been an outlier with Victory Day since 1975, the year Arkansas lawmakers adopted a new list of legal holidays that left off the state’s Aug. It has always been called “Victory Day” on the statute books, going all the way back to its establishment in 1948. And despite what many residents believe, the legal name of Rhode Island’s holiday was never “V-J Day” (short for “Victory Over Japan”). 14 - when Japan’s surrender was announced in the United States - the holiday is today observed on the second Monday in August. While the actual event that Victory Day commemorates happened on Aug. Monday is Rhode Island’s 73rd annual Victory Day, continuing the state’s custom of being the only place in America that honors the end of World War II with a legal holiday. (WPRI) – Like Del’s Lemonade or the Gaspee parade, Victory Day is one of the Ocean State’s unique summertime traditions. ![]()
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