This looks like V-J Day as the Gazette goes to press in a sunny and remarkably invigorating atmosphere. The morning began with clear skies and a feeling of both warmth and coolness in the air, the best that August can offer.

Early news broadcasts contained no hint of Japanese surrender, but by 8 o'clock the radio flashes were indicating the decision of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam declaration. Confidence began to appear more and more, and the day of liberation from war seemed to be at hand.

The Gazette ventures to utter a cheer and a prayer, the cheer full of heartfelt joy but also with a deep sense of solemnity at thought of the men who have brought the victory at such bitter cost, and if these words prove to he premature the reader's indulgence is asked. With all of us the cheer and the prayer will endure longer than others even of this rare kind, and it will not harm to start them early.

From the August 14, 1945 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

Japan's Surrender Is Recorded As Day's First Event

As the firecrackers explode in China the flags of liberty fly high and bright, and the church bells of the Christian world ring out, the surrender of Japan is recorded here as the first event of this day wherever there is an inch of free soil for the footsteps of free men.

It has ceased to matter just which day is V-J Day, for the fact of peace has been seeping out and filling up all the voids waiting for it many, many months. Friday was the day the Japanese surrender was first within the grasp of our minds, and now it is in the grasp of our belief. The thing has happened. The victory already has come to pass, as the Third Fleet is poised for its swift passage into Tokyo Bay.

On the Vineyard at 8 o'clock, all is quiet. The light fog covers almost everything but bright spots overhead show where the sun is soon to break through. All the daily occupations are begun, including the setting of the final type for today's Gazette.

The Island is awake and busy, the summer people are getting up, the radios are tuned in for broadcasts of late news.

So victory comes, the far away victory which is the most immediate thing to every living soul, and makes the commonplace on this morning full still a little anxious, feels the fresh confidence of the succeeding minute's news.