Where is this America?

The excerpt: The prisoners sighting of an American soldier coming to their rescue at Colditz Castle in the final days of the war.
The year: 1945
The area: Southern Germany
Chapter xxiv: Finale: The Relief of Colditz
An officer, standing near the gate, advanced with outstretched hand and said, cheerfully, “Any doughboys here?” The spell was broken. Suddenly, a mob was rushing towards him, shouting and cheering and struggling madly to reach him, to make sure that he was alive, to touch him, and from the touch to know again the miracle of living, to be men in their own right, freed from bondage, outcast no more, liberated by their Allies and their friends, their faith in God’s mercy justified, their patience rewarded, the nobility of mankind vindicated, justice at last accomplished and tyranny once more overcome.
Men wept, unable to restrain themselves. It was not enough that the body was free once more to roam the earth. Feelings, pent up and damned behind the mounting walls of five successive torturing, introverted years, had to erupt.
They welled up like gushing springs, they overflowed, they burst their banks, and they tumbled unhindered and uncontrolled. Frenchmen with tears streaming down their faces kissed each other on both cheeks-the salute of brothers. They kissed the GI, they kissed everyone within range. The storm of emotion burst.
The merciful rain descended. The grey clouds drifted from the horizon of the mind, borne on fresh salt-and moisture-laden breezes across the unchained oceans of memory from the far off shores of love. Home and country beckoned, loved ones were waiting. Wives and sweethearts, mothers, fathers, and children never seen, were calling across the gulf of the absent years.
Man was at his finest amidst the grandeur of this moment of liberation. A noble symphony arranged the Great Composer had reached its thunderous finale and, as the last triumphal chord swelled into the Hymn of Nations, man looked into the face of his Creator turned towards him, a vision of tenderness, mirrored for an instant by the purity of his own unrepressed torrent of joy and thankfulness. At such a moment, mountains move at the behest of man, he has such power in the sight of God.
Book2: Empire of the Sun (1984)
Author: J.G. Ballard
Story: Son of English parents who separated from them during the outbreak of war in Shanghai, China in 1942-1945, when the Japanese invaded China and attempted its occupation against Allied interests and citizens, journeyed through the challenges of wartime that undermined much of the moral training of his privileged class background. Japan at this time was a member of the Axis Powers of Japan, Germany and Italy.
Excerpt: The boy, Jim, is witnessing the dropping of American food canisters in the Shanghai countryside at a time when hunger was normal in his life and those of the adult prisoners of war accompanying him in the Japanese prison camps.
Chapter 34: The Refrigerator in the Sky
As he climbed the embankment the last of the parachutes had fallen into the fields to the west of Lunghua Camp. The murmur of the B-29s engines faded over the Yangtze. Jim approached the scarlet canopy, large enough to cover a house, which lay across the embankment. He gazed at the lustrous material, more luxurious than any fabric he had ever seen, at the immaculate stitching and seams, at the white cords that trailed into the culvert beside the canal.
The canister had burst on impact. Jim lowered himself down the slope of sun-baked earth, and squatted by the open mouth of the cylinder. Around him, on the floor of the culvert, was a ransom in canned food and cigarette packets.
The canister was crammed with cardboard cartons, and one had broken loose from the nose cone and scattered its contents on the ground. Jim crawled among the cans, wiping his eyes so that he could read the labels. There were tins of Spam Klim and Nescafe, bars of chocolate and cellophane packs of Lucky Strike and Chesterfield cigarettes, bundles of Reader’s Digest and Life magazines, Time and Saturday Evening Post.
The sight of so much food confused Jim, forcing on him a notion of choice that he had not known for years. The cans and packets were frozen, as if they had just emerged from an American refrigerator. He began to fill the broken box with canned meat, powdered milk, chocolate bars and a bundle of Reader’s Digests. Then, thinking ahead for the first time in several days, he added a carton of Chesterfield cigarettes.
The above is offered of a moment in 20th Century history when the American nation’s self perception as glorious kind and humane was shared by many members of the human community globally. The reader is asked — Does this image of America preside in the world community today? — chasimaa.wordpress.com.