A night of horror, and the worst maritime disaster of all time.

“It was too much death to contemplate, too much savagery and suffering; and in August 1945 no one was counting. For those who had seen the face of battle and been in the camps and under the bombs—and had lived—there was a sense of immense relief.”

Joe Louis was boxing's heavyweight world champion when he joined the US Army and fought for his country and his community.

In 1945, members of the American "Deer Team," part of the OSS, worked with Vietnamese guerrilla fighters to throw Japanese troops out of Indochina. As the war ended, the people of Vietnam looked to the United States to support their dreams of independence.

In 1945 the American intellectual, Norman Cousins, was one of the first to raise terrifying questions for humanity about the successful splitting of the atom.