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Surrender of Italy, Germany and Japan, World War II
(1946)
Part III. Surrender of Japan, pp. [69]-111 ff.
Page 96
Now we turn to the great tasks of reconstruction and restoration. I am confident that we will be able to apply the same skill, resourcefulness, and keen thinking to these problems as were applied to the problems of winning the victory. "A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won." Address by GENERAL MAC ARTHUR after the signing of the Surrender Instrument by Japan. Tokyo Bay. Aboard the battleship Missouri. September 2, 1915.16 My fellow countrymen, today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death-the seas bear only commerce-men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire World is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed, and in report- ing this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. I speak for the unnamed brave millions homeward bound to take up the chal. lenge of that future which they did so much to sal- vage from the brink of disaster. As I look back on the long tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear; when democracy was on the 16 Congressional Record, September 6, 1945. 96
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