← Back to the front page

Bringing the Boys Home: America’s Demobilization After WWII

Khalid Elhassan December 18, 2024 13 min

Magic-Carpet - Cover of a souvenir booklet prepared for US Army personnel in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations — Cover of a souvenir booklet prepared for US Army personnel in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. Yank, the Army Weekly

8. A Sudden Complication

Japanese officials sign their country’s surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri. Japan Today

Daunting and complex as it was, Magic Carpet was completed relatively quickly. By September, 1945, 1.4 million servicemen, nearly all of them from the European Theater, had been repatriated. By December 1^st, 1945, the WSA had successfully repatriated over 3.5 million personnel. By February, 1946, repatriation from the ETO had, by and large, been completed. Repatriation from the European Theater began relatively smoothly. By 1945, both the US Army and the WSA were experienced in the rapid transport of massive numbers of troops from bases on America’s East Coast to Europe. Reversing the process was relatively simple. Then the sudden capitulation of Japan in August, 1945, threw a monkey’s wrench into the works.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.