1951
Japan signs San Francisco Peace Treaty
Japan and forty-eight Allied nations signed a formal peace treaty ending the Pacific War, seven years after V-J Day. The Soviet Union refused to sign. The United States kept Okinawa and gained basing rights that remain a source of Japanese domestic friction seventy years later. Sovereign Japan rejoined the international order.
Catcher in the Rye published
J. D. Salinger's novel about a prep-school dropout wandering New York, disgusted with phonies and grieving a dead brother, spoke to something post-war Americans had not yet named: adolescent alienation as cultural condition. Holden Caulfield became a permanent figure in American literature, a touchstone for every disaffected teenager, and eventually, disturbingly, an obsession in the minds of several famous murderers.
Truman fires MacArthur
After General Douglas MacArthur publicly advocated expanding the Korean War into China with nuclear weapons, President Truman relieved him of command. MacArthur returned to an American hero's welcome and a Joint Session of Congress, where he said, Old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Civilian control of the military had been asserted.
Twenty-second Amendment ratified
Reacting to FDR's unprecedented four terms, the United States formally limited presidents to two terms in office. Never again would Americans be able to elect a Roosevelt who refused to leave. The amendment made the presidency, paradoxically, both more and less powerful: each occupant more visible but certain to leave, a lame duck from the moment of reelection. George Washington's precedent was finally law.