Events from the year 1945 in the United States. World War II ended during this year following the surrender of Germany in May and that of Japan in September.
Incumbents Federal government President: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-New York) (until April 12) Harry S. Truman (D-Missouri) (starting April 12) Vice President: Henry A. Wallace (D-Iowa) (until January 20) Harry S. Truman (D-Missouri) (January 20 – April 12) vacant (starting April 12) Chief Justice: Harlan F. Stone (New York) Speaker of the House of Representatives: Sam Rayburn (D-Texas) Senate Majority Leader: Alben W. Barkley (D-Kentucky) Congress: 78th (until January 3), 79th (starting January 3)
State governments Governors and lieutenant governors Governors
Lieutenant governors
Events January
January – American troops cross the Siegfried Line into Belgium. January 6 Naval lieutenant George H. W. Bush, future president of the United States, and future First Lady Barbara Pierce marry in Rye, New York. Pepe Le Pew makes his debut as the first major Looney Tunes character, in "Odor-able Kitty" January 20 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States. No president before, or since, reaches a third term in office. Harry S. Truman is sworn in as Vice President of the United States. January 24 – Nine OSS men and Associated Press war correspondent Joseph Morton are summarily executed by the Germans at Mauthausen concentration camp, contrary to the Geneva Convention. January 30 – Raid at Cabanatuan: 121 American soldiers and 800 Filipino guerrillas free 813 American POWs from the Japanese-held camp in Cabanatuan, Philippines. January 31 – Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad for desertion, the first American soldier since the American Civil War, and last to date to be executed for this offense.
February
February 2 – WW II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill leave to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference. February 3 WW II: United States forces capture Manila, Philippines from the Japanese Imperial Army. Walt Disney Productions' seventh feature film, The Three Caballeros, is released. It is Disney's second of six package films to be released through the 1940s and the first feature film to incorporate traditional animation with live-action actors. February 4 – WW II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin begin the Yalta Conference (ends February 11). February 7 – WW II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila. February 8 – The Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, championed by charismatic native leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, is passed by the territorial Senate, after the legislature defeated a previous bill in 1943. February 12 – A devastating tornado outbreak in Mississippi and Alabama kills 45 people and injures 427 others. February 16 Combined American and Filipino forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula. American and Filipino ground forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines. February 19 – WW II: Battle of Iwo Jima – About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima. February 23 The American and Filipino troops enter Intramuros, Manila. The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined American and Filipino ground troops. Battle of Iwo Jima: A group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (taken by Joe Rosenthal), later wins a Pulitzer Prize. February – Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories, at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin.
March March 1 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives what will be his last address to a joint session of Congress, reporting on the Yalta Conference. March 2 – Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace starts his tenure as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Roosevelt. March 3 – WW II: United States and Filipino troops take Manila, Philippines. March 7 – WW II: American troops seize the bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany and begin to cross. March 15 – The 17th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by John Cromwell and Bob Hope, is held at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles, broadcast via radio for the first time. Leo McCarey's Going My Way wins Outstanding Motion Picture. The film also wins the most awards overall with seven, including McCarey's second win for Best Director, and ties for the most nominations with Henry King's Wilson, both with ten. March 19 – WW II: Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier , killing about 800 of her crewmen and crippling the ship. March 24 – The cartoon character Sylvester the cat debuts in Life with Feathers March 29 – The "Clash of Titans" in basketball: George Mikan and Bob Kurland duel at Madison Square Garden as OSU defeats DePaul 52–44.
April
April 1 – WW II: Battle of Okinawa – U.S. troops land on Okinawa. April 4 – The Holocaust: American troops liberate their first Nazi concentration camp, Ohrdruf death camp in Germany. April 7 – The only flight of the German ramming unit known as the Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force. April 12 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia; Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes the 33rd president. April 18 – The American war correspondent Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima off Okinawa. April 19 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, a musical play based on Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, opens on Broadway and becomes their second long-running stage classic. April 25 WW II: Elbe Day – United States and Soviet troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two. Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco. April 27 – U.S. Ordnance troops find the coffins of 18th-century Prussian kings Frederick Wilhelm I and Frederick the Great, in addition to German President Paul von Hindenburg and his wife. April 30 – Adolf Hitler commits suicide by shooting himself with a gun in an underground bunker. Eva Braun, his wife, bit into a cyanide capsule.
May May 3 – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to U.S. forces (later he becomes at the forefront and a pioneer of the U.S. space program). May 4 – The Holy Crown of Hungary is found in Mattsee, Austria, by the United States Army 86th Infantry Division. The U.S. government keeps the crown in Fort Knox for safekeeping from the Soviets until it is returned to Hungary on January 6, 1978. May 5 A Japanese Fu-Go balloon bomb kills five children and a grown woman, Elsie Mitchell, near Bly, Oregon, when it explodes as they drag it from the woods. They are the only people killed by an enemy attack on the American mainland during World War II. The US 11th Armored Division liberates the prisoners of Mauthausen concentration camp, including Simon Wiesenthal. Expatriate American poet and author Ezra Pound turns himself in to American soldiers in Italy and is imprisoned for treason. The cartoon character Yosemite Sam debuts in Hare Trigger. May 8 Victory in Europe Day: The Allies accept Germany's unconditional surrender. War in Europe is over Hermann Göring surrenders himself to the U.S. Army near Radstadt.
June June 22 – WWII: Battle of Okinawa ends, with U.S. occupation of the island until 1972. June 26 – The United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco. June 30 – John von Neumann's First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC is distributed, containing the first published description of the logical design of a computer, with stored-program and instruction data stored in the same address space within the memory (von Neumann architecture).
July July 8 – WW II: President Harry S. Truman is informed that Japan will talk peace if it can retain the Emperor. July 9 – A forest fire breaks out in the Tillamook Burn (the third in that area of Oregon since 1933). July 15 – The Scott Morrison Award of Minor Hockey Excellence is first given; the first recipient is Gordie Howe. July 16 – The Trinity test detonates the world's first atomic bomb. July 21 – WW II: President Harry S. Truman approves the order for atomic bombs to be used against Japan. July 28 – A U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14 people, including all on board. July 30 – WW II: The heavy cruiser is hit and sunk by torpedoes from the in the Philippine Sea. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for up to four days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles B. McVay III of the cruiser is later court-martialed and convicted; in 2000, he is posthumously exonerated.
August
August 6 – WW II: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima – United States Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay drops a uranium-235 atomic bomb, codenamed "Little Boy", on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. local time, resulting in between 90,000 and 146,000 deaths. August 7 – President Harry Truman announces the successful bombing of Hiroshima with the atomic bomb, while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. August 8 – The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States Senate, and this nation becomes the third one to join the new international organization. August 9 – Atomic bombing of Nagasaki: United States B-29 Bockscar drops a plutonium-239 atomic bomb, codenamed "Fat Man", on the Japanese city of Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m. local time, resulting in between 39,000 and 80,000 deaths. August 14 (August 15 in Japan) – Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's surrender on the radio. The United States calls this day V-J Day (Victory over Japan). This ends the period of Japanese expansionism and begins the period of Occupied Japan. August 17 – The United States and the U.S.S.R. split up the Korean Peninsula making North Korea and South Korea August 31 – A team at American Cyanamid's Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, New York, led by Yellapragada Subbarow, announces they have obtained folic acid in a pure crystalline form.
September September 2 World War II ends: The final official surrender of Japan is accepted by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States, and delegates from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, China, and others from a Japanese delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, on board the American battleship in Tokyo Bay (but in Japan August 14 is recognized as the day the Pacific War ended). General MacArthur is given the title of Supreme Commander Allied Powers and tasked with the occupation of Japan. Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita surrenders to Filipino and American forces at Kiangan, Ifugao. September 5 The Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko comes forward with numerous documents implicating the Soviet Union in numerous spy rings in North America: both in the United States and in Canada. Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose", is arrested in Yokohama. September 8 – American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude. This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea. September 9 – The first actual case of a (computer) bug being found, is a moth lodged in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at the Naval Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.