Events from the year 1945 in the United States. World War II ended during this year following the surrender of Germany in May and that of Japan in September.
January 31 – Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad for desertion, the first American soldier since the American Civil War, and last to date to be executed for this offense.
March 1 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives what will be his last address to a joint session of Congress, reporting on the Yalta Conference.
April 4 – WW II: American troops liberate their first Nazi concentration camp, Ohrdrufdeath camp in Germany.
April 7 – The only flight of the German ramming unit known as the Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force.
Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco.
April 27 – U.S. Ordnance troops find the coffins of Frederick Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great, Paul Von Hindenburg, and his wife.
May
May 3 – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to U.S. forces (later he became at the forefront and a pioneer of the U.S. space program).
May 5
A Japanese balloon bomb kills five children and a grown woman, Elsie Mitchell, near Bly, Oregon, when it explodes as they drag it from the woods. They are the only people killed by an enemy attack on the American mainland during World War II.
July 30 – WW II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis is hit and sunk by torpedoes from the I-58 in the Philippine Sea. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for up to four days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles B. McVay III of the cruiser is later court-martialed and convicted.
August 7 – President Harry Truman announces the successful bombing of Hiroshima with the atomic bomb, while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
August 8 – The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States Senate, and this nation becomes the third one to join the new international organization.
August 14 (August 15 in Japan) – Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's surrender on the radio. The United States calls this day V-J Day (Victory over Japan). This ends the period of Japanese expansionism and begins the period of Occupied Japan.
World War II ends: The final official surrender of Japan is accepted by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, and Fleet AdmiralChester Nimitz for the United States, and delegates from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, China, and others from a Japanese delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, on board the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (but in Japan August 14 is recognized as the day the Pacific War ended).
The Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko comes forward with numerous documents implicating the Soviet Union in numerous spy rings in North America: both in the United States and in Canada.
September 8 – American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude. This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea.
September 9 – The first actual case of a (computer) bug being found, is a moth lodged in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at the Naval Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.
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^"On This Day", New York Times, retrieved 24 August 2016
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