Edward Gallogly, a future Democratic nominee for governor, proposed eliminating Victory Day as a legal state holiday and replacing it with Good Friday - an idea with obvious appeal in heavily Catholic Rhode Island. 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 World War II, and three future presidents - John F. Patrick Conley, the state’s historian laureate. “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.’”Ībout 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. “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. Indeed, the rationale may have seemed obvious considering how much the war had affected Rhode Island. 14, 1948, notes the first annual Victory Day. IAn article in the Cranston Herald edition of Aug. Republican Majority Leader William Thompson said that while there “may be merit” to the economic concerns, “we certainly can set aside a day to honor the men who won the greatest war in history.” That argument fell on deaf ears in the Senate, which passed the measure creating Victory Day the following year. (Congress did just that in 1954, rechristening that holiday 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. Not everyone was happy: 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 the idea since as early as 1946, the year after the war ended, and Windsor’s bill quickly passed the House with bipartisan support on March 6, 1947. (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. 10 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, like many news outlets then and now, the paper referred to as “V-J Day” – was “always a big legal holiday in Rhode Island.” In the “Encyclopedia of American Holidays and National Days,” author Len Travers remarks, “The tenacity of Rhode Island in celebrating Aug. (Some websites claim Victory Day used to be a federal holiday, too, but that appears to be a myth – there is no evidence for it in an authoritative 1999 U.S. Rhode Island has apparently been on its own since the late 1960s or ’70s, when Arkansas dropped its version of Victory Day - known there as “World War II Memorial Day” - and reportedly gave state workers their birthdays off as a consolation. It has always been called “Victory Day” on the statute books, going back to its establishment in 1948. 14, when Japan’s surrender was announced here, but the holiday is now observed on the second Monday in August.Īnd no, despite what many residents believe, the legal name of Rhode Island’s holiday was never “V-J Day” (short for “Victory Over Japan”). The actual event it commemorates happened on Aug. Monday is Rhode Island’s 72nd annual Victory Day, continuing its custom of being the only state that observes a legal holiday to mark the end of World War II. (WPRI) – Like Del’s Lemonade or Saugy dogs, Victory Day is one of the Ocean State’s unique summertime traditions.
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