September 5th, 1945 (WEDNESDAY)
CHINA: Allied forces occupy Tientsin.
FRENCH INDOCHINA: In Vietnam, Laotian Prince Souphanouvong flies to Hanoi in an aircraft provided by the U.S. of Strategic Services (OSS) meets with Ho Chi Minh to discuss Vietnamese aid in forming an Indochinese bloc opposing the return of colonialism. Laotian Prince Phetsarath opposes the initiative.
JAPAN: Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose," is arrested in Yokohama.
In 1949, she is tried for treason in a U.S. court in San Francisco, California, convicted of the charges and sentenced to ten years in prison and a US$10,000 fine. She served six years at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and is released early in 1956. She maintained her innocence, asserting that she has not said the words used to convict her, and that she has remained a loyal American. Though forced to broadcast to the Allied troops, she claimed that she, with the help of American POWs assigned to the radio broadcasts, made herself and her words purposefully ridiculous. She has refused to give up her American citizenship, despite pressure and even punishment from the Japanese who forced her into the broadcasting role. In the 1970s a public campaign brought to light the testimony of the POWs who worked with her and supported her story. The testimony of the witnesses against her is questioned and she is eventually pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977. After her imprisonment she returned to Chicago where her family owned a store. She continued to work at the store and as of 2005, she is 89-years-old and living in Chicago, Illinois.
CAROLINE ISLANDS: The Japanese surrender Yap Atoll in a ceremony on board the destroyer USS Tillman (DD-641).
CANADA: Igor Gouzenko, a cypher
clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, defects with more than 100 secret
documents under his coat detailing the workings of a major Soviet spy
ring operating in Canada, with tentacles reaching into the Department of
External Affairs code room, the British High Commissioner's Office and the Chalk
River, Ontario, nuclear facility. His defection results in 20 espionage trials
and nine convictions. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave Gouzenko Canadian
asylum and a new identity, and he dies in hiding in 1982. (Dana Andrews played Gouzenko in the 1948 film
"The Iron Curtain.")
Canada's first nuclear reactor, ZEEP (Zero Energy
Experimental Pile) at the Chalk River Laboratory, achieves criticality.
HMC ML 072 and ML 122 paid off.
U.S.A.: H. Corwin Hinshaw and William H. Feldman of the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, report the first successful use of streptomycin in treating tuberculosis in humans.
Escort carrier USS Tinian launched.
Aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea launched.