August 14, 1945 — V-J Day and the Start of Scottsdale's Postwar Boom

What happened

President Truman announced Japan's acceptance of surrender terms on the evening of August 14, 1945 (already August 15 in Japan), setting off celebrations across the Valley. Thunderbird Field II, which had trained 5,500 primary-flight cadets since 1942, wound down; Camp Papago Park began repatriating its German prisoners; and the men and women the war had scattered began coming back to a town that had barely changed since 1941 and was about to change completely.

Why it matters

The peace released the population that built modern Scottsdale. Veterans who had trained in the Valley returned with GI loans; the Craft Center followed in 1947, Rural Metro and the Progress in 1948, the census hit 2,032 in 1950, and the town incorporated in 1951 — the whole postwar chain begins here.

The last summer of the war

Scottsdale’s war had been visible mainly overhead. From June 1942 the Stearman biplanes of Thunderbird Field II circled the fields north of town from first light to dusk, and by the summer of 1945 some 5,500 cadets had soloed there. To the south, Camp Papago Park held German prisoners — U-boat crews among them — whose Christmas 1944 tunnel escape had ended with the last man walked back in January. The town itself, unincorporated and roughly two thousand strong, had spent four years short of young men and long on rented rooms, cadets on weekend pass, and ration books at Saba’s.

On the evening of August 14, 1945, the radio carried President Truman’s announcement that Japan had accepted the surrender terms. Phoenix filled its streets; the Valley’s papers printed their largest type; the churches in Scottsdale rang whatever bells they had. Within weeks the airfield’s training schedule stopped and the POW camp began the slow process of shipping its prisoners home. The desert went quiet for the first time since 1942.

What came home

The quiet did not last, because the war had done something to the Valley that the peace could not undo: it had introduced hundreds of thousands of Americans to Arizona winters. Veterans who had trained at the state’s airfields — including a good many who had flown their first circuits over Scottsdale — came back after 1945 with GI loans, young families, and a preference for a place where December was warm. The town they returned to was almost exactly the village of 1941. Six years later it was a municipality.

The chain runs straight from this day. The Arizona Craft Center and the town’s first shopping center arrived in 1947; Rural Metro and the Scottsdale Progress in 1948; the census counted 2,032 in 1950 and the town incorporated in June 1951 with Malcolm White, whose Whitey’s Cafe had fed the cadets, as mayor. The idle airfield became Scottsdale Airport and the Airpark in the 1960s. The rest of the year — including the recapture of the last Papago escapee — is at 1945, and the war decade in the 1940s chapter.