In This Issue

Utah will forever be connected to World War II. Struck by a torpedo at 8:01 am on Sunday, December 7,1941,the battleship USS Utah became one of the first casualties of the war that would last until 1945.While other naval vessels were damaged on that fateful day, only the USS Utah and the USS Arizona remain as sunken memorials to the event that carried the United States into war. Three and a half years later and a half a world away on the Normandy coast of France, the state of Utah was honored, along with the city of Omaha, with their names used to designate the American landing beaches for the allied invasion of Europe. Today Utah Beach and Omaha Beach are conspicuous place names on maps of France and the heroism that transpired there is honored and revered.

For the thousands of servicemen and women, prisoners of war, defense and construction workers and others who came to the Beehive State during the war years, Utah is a place and an experience still remembered. If the initial Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 was arguably the most important event in Utah’s history during the nineteenth century, then 1945 and the end of World War II holds, in the judgment of many, the same distinction for the twentieth century. It is appropriate then, that this issue of Utah Historical Quarterly commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war.

Our first article offers an introduction to Utah during World War II primarily through the experiences of Utahns who lived during the fateful years of 1941 to 1945.Recognizing that any account of the Utah during World War II can only be superficial and impressionistic given the complexities that war brought to all aspects of public and private life, this overview is intended only as one point of departure for understanding this momentous event.

Commissioned in 1909,the USS Utah sailed proudly as a battleship until the London Naval Treaty of 1930 required the vessel to be converted into a target ship. Our second article recalls the history of the Utah and offers first hand accounts of sailors on board the ship when it was attacked at Pearl Harbor.

The next three articles recount the experiences of Utahns during the war—one soldier who landed at Utah Beach on June 6,1944;another who experienced the war in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany and recorded his odyssey on film; and a third who returned to the land of her parents to marry and live in Japan while her parents and siblings remained in Utah during the war. Our final article describes the work of the Bingham Canyon Victory Flag Society and the hundreds of letters it received from service men and women around the world.

As Utahns and Americans we join with the citizens of many nations to commemorate the end of one of the darkest, most destructive and violent epochs in human history. In the pages that follow, we recall and honor the commitment, sacrifice, patriotism, and heroism of a quickly passing generation of Utahns. At the same time, we consider other aspects of the war and their impact on Utah as we seek to understand this difficult period of history and in so doing help shape our own present and our children’s future.