Japan has unofficially surrendered, so the men of the 92nd wait to find out what happens next.
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| Entrance to Camp John Hay in Baguio, where the Japanese envoys signed the documents of surrender |
August 25, 1945 It is said we'll go to the Kobe area in about a month with the 25th Division. Nothing to do, except read. Now I'm at "Henry Esmond" [a novel about the English Restoration by William Makepeace Thackeray]. Men going home on points.
August 26, 1945 A quiet Sunday. No mail for several days, the planes supposedly being used to take stuff to Japan [medicine and food?].
August 27, 1945 [Capt.?] Max [Vinicor] and I went to I Corps to see if we could do anything about the dirty deal we got on the TD [temporary duty] situation. Nope, we are simply Dittled [diddled?] on the Digit of Destiny.
August 28, 1945 Occupation of Japan began today. I turned in my carbine and shovel.
August 28, 1945 I heard today that we were slated to land on H+5 [five hours after the first landing] with the 33rd Div. on the east coast of Kyushu, and the 25th with the 98th in reserve. G-2 [army intelligence] now says that their estimate of 5 Jap divisions opposing the landing was correct. Oh, man! What a hot spot that would have been.
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| Modified CIA publications map |
September 1, 1945 "First to the May Co. [a Denver department store], then back to school"! [Gene must have been musing on the advertisements he remembered receiving around the time that school started in Colorado]. This is the nicest part of the year at home. Working on my lecture [he explains more about this later].
September 2, 1945 Heavy rain last night. I received 30 letters, 13 from Beth! Also the formal Jap surrender was signed.
September 3, 1945 Rainy day. I gave a lecture on Japan and her Empire, to the outfit. Some of the gang went to Baguio to see Yamashita surrender.
September 5, 1945 Painting footlockers. Received Jap language book.
September 6, 1945 No more censorship! I sent home a bunch of papers, pictures from Maptalk [a weekly magazine with restricted distribution to the American armed forces in the Pacific theater] and my diaries. No more blackout on board ship!
September 7, 1945 Put 2nd coat of green paint on my footlocker. New point system score for officers. My 75 is a long way from the 100 required for field grades.
September 8, 1945 18 or 20 LST's are pulled in down by Lingayen to load. They passed out some overseas stripes. I'm going to sew on 5 right away - may as well!
September 9, 1945 Heavy rain last night. Japs say they expected us to land at Kyushu late in October and were saving all their planes to repel it!
September 11, 1945 All night rain. Rumor says all troops here now will be home by Jan. 1st. That is 4 months!
September 12, 1944 Larry Williamson left on points - 97. He had 25 months in Alaska [which was counted as overseas] and 16 over here [Gene had 11 months in the California desert and almost 27 months overseas]. I bought window-pane clamshell boxes P3.50 [$1.75].
September 14, 1945 Point system [can go home with one of the following] 1) 80 points 2) age 48 or 3) pre-Pearl Harbor. Only [Capt. (?) Max] Vinicor, [Capt. (?) John] Yount and I fail to qualify of the whole gang!
Counting points, all of the doctors who started when he did should have had the same number of points for time in service (38 months), time overseas (26 months) and campaigns (New Guinea and the Philippines), or 74 points, so the other doctors must have been older, had children, or received awards (Gene didn't get his Bronze Star until later). Vinicor and Yount were younger than Gene, and hadn't been with the 92nd quite as long.
