August 1945. News broke the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

Also making national news that day was the story of Tech. Sgt. Kurt Joachim Hermann II, a 26-year-old from Long Island missing in action and presumed dead. A month earlier, on his record-breaking 108th bombing mission, Hermann's Boeing B-29 bomber had been shot down on a raid over Kochi, Japan.

On Sept. 2, 1945, 80 years ago Tuesday, the Japanese signed surrender documents aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, marking the formal end to World War II. The announcement came just months after the German surrender on May 9, 1945.

The latest estimates from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs suggest fewer than 50,000 of the 16.4 million Americans who fought the war remain alive in 2025

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