Readers Remember

Japan’s surrender in 1945. I was stationed in San Francisco in the Navy. Market Street became a bedlam of humanity. Streetcars stopped running as trolleys were pulled from overhead cable lines. Tops of streetcars were covered with a mass of shouting bodies.

WILLIAM McCOY

El Segundo

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I had waited almost half my life for this! I’d flattened dozens--maybe hundreds--of cans. My fingers were perpetually sore from separating the tinfoil from the paper on tiny gum wrappers, and now, suddenly, World War II was over!

Joy pulsated in my pores. And here I was, 10 years old, stuck in the middle of acres of orange trees, without a car, without a phone, without a living soul for miles around.

A huge sunbeam filled my body, delight, elation, almost giddy exhilaration. I had to act! Now!

And five minutes later, there I was, all by myself, marching up and down our deserted country lane, my only audience a gang of crows on a high wire and a few families of furry rabbits trembling in their burrows. My own giddy self, banging a big kitchen pot with an equally large pot lid, and yelling to the sky that the war was over.

ETOLA SPARKS BLUCKER

Anaheim

In 200 words or less, send us your memories, comments or eyewitness accounts. We will publish as many as we can on this page until the end of the year. Write to Century, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail century@latimes.com. We regret we cannot acknowledge individual submissions.