'They were true heroes': Services across the East mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day

ITV News

a day ago

The families of those who served in the Far East and Pacific during the Second World War have honoured their bravery at services across the East of England.
Special events including in Norwich, Cambridge and Bedford on Friday marked the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, when Japanese forces surrendered and the war officially ended.
Pauline Simpson, who is secretary of the National FEPOW Fellowship which organised the remembrance service held at Norwich Cathedral, said she was "very proud" to have been involved.
Ms Simpson's father, Sidney Vincent, was beaten and starved as a prisoner of war in Singapore for three-and-a-half years, only returning home in October 1945.
"It's been part of my whole life. As far as I'm concerned, it's not just today, it's every day," she told ITV News Anglia.
Mr Vincent, a newsagent from Topcroft in Norfolk, never spoke about his time in the Far East but had "terrible" nightmares and did not receive the hero's welcome Ms Simpson says other service personnel received on VE Day three months earlier.
She only learnt about his experiences from a set of postcards he had bought in Johannesburg on his way home, on the back of which he wrote the songs he and his fellow prisoners sang to keep their spirits up.
Ms Simpson added: "If we don't remember these conflicts, how can we ever move forward?
"They really were true heroes."
Like Mr Vincent, Anthony Truett's father Kenneth rarely spoke to his children about his three years as a prisoner of war.
Mr Truett attended a VJ Day service at Great St Mary's church in Cambridge to remember his father's service as a private in the Suffolk Regiment, telling ITV News Anglia: "We all wish now that we'd asked more, but all we can do is read and pick up bits and pieces.
"We're getting a younger generation coming in, and we need to tell them and help them learn.
"All they can do is read about it, but we've had the privilege of speaking to FEPOWs."
By 1945, some 365,000 British and 1.5 million Commonwealth troops had been deployed across Asia and the Pacific.
More than 90,000 British troops were casualties in the war against Japan, and nearly 30,000 died, while more than 12,000 Britons were among the 190,000 Commonwealth troops held as prisoners of war by the Japanese.
Cllr Dinah Pounds, mayor of Cambridge, said VJ Day is important to Cambridgeshire's identity, as 2,000 families in the county had a member fighting in the Far East or Pacific of which 784 died.
"For those families, it was very disruptive, and it means a lot to them to remember those people," she said.
"But also for the ones who came home, who were so traumatised and had had such a terrible experience as prisoners of war."
John McKenzie, who attended a service in Bedford, said it was important to remember all those who served alongside the British in the Far East and Pacific.
His father was the captain of a platoon in Burma, and shared few memories of his time there.
"It was such a brutal war. People need to be remembered for what they gave up, as well as those who never returned at all," Mr McKenzie told ITV News Anglia.
"They came back and were the forgotten army. It's just incredible, what they gave up, and they did it willingly."