Fort Miles celebrates Victory over Japan Day
“It was a big deal when the war ended. The whole world celebrated,” said Will Short, Fort Miles Historical Association member, as he opened the annual VJ Day ceremony Sept. 2 near the entrance to the Fort Miles Museum in Cape Henlopen State Park near Lewes.
“So here we are today, 80 years later, commemorating those from Delaware who perished, and the end of the war in the shadow of a gun barrel from the USS Missouri,” he said.
The site of the ceremony can’t be overstated. The Japanese delegation walked under gun barrel 371 during the Sept. 2, 1945 surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri to end World War II. It’s one of a handful of gun barrels still in existence and arrived at the fort in 2012.
The association also took time to honor some of the nearly 800 Delawareans who died during the war. Volunteers read the names of 100 of the fallen heroes each year. And this year, FMHA paid tribute to the USS Missouri Campaign Committee of U.S. Navy veteran Nick Carter, chair; Jim Ford, honorary chair; Laurie Carter, logistics coordinator; U.S. Navy veteran and FMHA member William Manthorpe; FMHA board member Joe Johnson; and the late Gary Wray, FMHA president from 2003-20 and one of the FMHA founders.
The committee raised more than $100,000 to transport the gun barrel from the Norfolk Navy Yard, across the Chesapeake Bay on a rail car barge and then by train to Lewes and Fort Miles, where it arrived April 28, 2012. The Navy had planned to scrap the barrel.
Fort Miles was a U.S. Army World War II installation located on Cape Henlopen near Lewes in what is now Cape Henlopen State Park. Although funds to build the fort were approved in 1934, it was 1938 before construction began on the fort, which served as a coastal defense facility with 10 gun batteries, 30 guns and 2,500 soldiers.
Taking part in the ceremony were Cape High School trumpet player Amelia Bickel, the Rev. Carol Flett, bell of honor ringers Nicholas and Christoper Schimmel, FMHA docent trainer and World War II historian Ed Paterline, piper Lani Spahr, emcee Will Short and Fort Miles Museum President Jim Pierce.
Nicholas Schimmel also read Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s speech aboard the Missouri during the surrender ceremony. Schimmel said it was an honor to read the speech because his late grandfather, Gary Wray, read the speech each year during each ceremony. Wray, who died Feb. 3, 2022, was the driving force behind the formation of the Fort Miles Historical Association and the Fort Miles Museum.
