VJ Day, Honolulu, Hawaii, August 14, 1945

[bakubo]

This is a cool, historic home movie. By the way, not my Dad.

65 Years Ago my Dad shot this film along Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki capturing spontaneous celebrations that broke out upon first hearing news of the Japanese surrender. Kodachrome 16mm film: God Bless Kodachrome, right?

http://vimeo.com/5645171

Maybe your NEX home video will be just as cool.

[KevinBarrett]

Wow, thanks for the link, Henry. From the Vimeo page were also linked some photos on Flickr of the Japanese Surrender aboard the USS Missouri. All in all, they're priceless memories and fantastic photojournalism.

[bakubo]

Wow, thanks for the link, Henry. From the Vimeo page were also linked some photos on Flickr of the Japanese Surrender aboard the USS Missouri. All in all, they're priceless memories and fantastic photojournalism.

Here's a newsreel of the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcnH_kF1zXc

[KevinBarrett]

Could have used Sweep Panorama, here.

[Greg Beetham]

Hmm looks like the negative of that surrender photo might have been scanned incorrectly (or something), the US flag in the background is back the front....unless it was actually on the USS Missouri like that.
Greg

[Winston]

This is a cool, historic home movie. By the way, not my Dad.

65 Years Ago my Dad shot this film along Kalakaua Ave. in Waikiki capturing spontaneous celebrations that broke out upon first hearing news of the Japanese surrender. Kodachrome 16mm film: God Bless Kodachrome, right?

http://vimeo.com/5645171

Maybe your NEX home video will be just as cool.

Thanks for posting this. It's really wonderful.
The sound track is a perfect choice...Jimmy Durante?

[Greg Beetham]

Yeah I agree, just too see all those vintage cars in original condition is something to behold.
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

Vintage? I think most of them class as 'thoroughbred' for car buffs

David

[Greg Beetham]

Yeah you could be right, I'm not that 'up' on the classifications, I think there is classic, vintage and the thoroughbred one as well, but as time marches on I'm not sure if there have been or will be any revision in the time periods etc. I dimly remember the late 60's and through the 70's when a couple of friends were restoring old cars and there was a vintage class back then but I wasn't too sure where the classic cut out and the vintage cut in. But now that WWII cars are in the range of 60-70 years old, they are now probably older than a vintage was in the 60's, if you get what I mean. (of course, that then makes a vintage older by an equivalent amount). I wonder what class the cars of the 60's 70's and even the 80's are classed as now? ....they are getting long in the tooth now as well.
It just seems like yesterday that one of the family bought an 84 Ford Fairlane, nice car, and now it won't be long before it's 30 years old...(now they have a Camry as well).
Greg

[KevinBarrett]

I wonder what class the cars of the 60's 70's and even the 80's are classed as now? ....they are getting long in the tooth now as well.

I believe these range from "classics" to "malaise era."

[David Kilpatrick]

Veteran had a cut-off date, which I used to know as my father owned two vintage Bentleys in the 1950s-70s (a 1928 3 litre and a 1929 4.5 litre which had been destroyed to resemble a Le Mans, but my brother eventually restored to its touring body and original blue paintwork). I seem to remember 1922 but that seems illogical. Certainly WWI vehicles are all veteran. Vintage ran from 192X to 1935, then thoroughbred which I think ends around 1950, then classic, then (as we knew it) 'modern'.

I guess that makes today's cars post-modern.

The UK now classes all cars over a certain age as 'classic' for vehicle tax purposes and that can include some surprisingly modern cars. Our son Richard has now owned, I think, over 130 different cars in 18 years of motoring. He knows all this stuff backwards and can tell what individual parts were used in countless cars of the 1970s to present day.

Our classic cars over the years have been very few - a 1969 Karmann Ghia razoredge coupé, a similarly dated Berkeley T60 three-wheeler 'mini E-type', and Shirley when she needed a car had a couple of lovely Golf early cabriolets, a perfect little original Mini 850, and a Porsche 924 - her last car, before it got vandalised and she decided not to bother with a replacement.

My brother Colin was in charge of British Leyland production lines at Longbridge then Cowley during his employed career, and sold us many ex-BMC/BLMC staff cars at ultra low prices. They only drove them for under a year, then sold them cheaply because the fallout of specks from the paint workshops used to ruin the finish. We were offered Sir Michael Edwarde's big Daimler one year for £4000, but I could not afford the fuel or insurance, so we got a Marina 1300 instead. Those cars were HORRIBLE. They were the most unreliable, badly-made cars in the world.

He kept as a souvenir part of a packing crate from Unipart in Belgium, which some joker had stencilled (along with all the other crates): "Genuine Austin-Morris Spare Farts". I thought that was hilarious at the time.

David

[Greg Beetham]

Malaise era..yep there were a few lemons amongst them throughout that period I reckon, there were a few that I liked as well, the Trans Am, the Charger and Challenger, a couple of the Mustangs, the Camero wasn't bad either although I never did take to the Stingray for some reason.
Greg

ps. Ha! of course, that's the class I couldn't remember....veteran!

[Greg Beetham]

The Marina, oh my goodness graciousment, I worked with someone once who's wife had one and she would periodically ring in for him to come see if he could get the car going again, so I took to calling it a Marooner...
Greg