80 years since VJ Day marking the end of World War II

Up and down the country there were short acts of commemoration at 11am at Iocal war memorials, usually only locally advertised.
I've just been to one such ceremony in my own village, at what was until yesterday Cumbria's newest war memorial. A man whose sacrifice in WW2 had not been commemorated.

Interesting thread with the first two posts by our British cousins.

Here, I have heard little about VJ Day, which is strange because the US, much more than the UK, was so heavily involved in the Pacific theater. We sometimes forget that when VE Day occurred, the fighting on Okinawa would last another six weeks; we were planning the invasion of Japan with the expectation for hundreds of thousands of casualties; hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians would be killed in our bombing campaign; and the Pacific war lasted another three months and ended then only because of the two atomic bombs that were dropped.

Thank you for remembering. The Pacific was where my family members served. My grandmother was a UN nurse in Shanghai. My grandfather worked with the Flying Tigers and my uncle was a navigator flying the Burma Hump.

I just realized that technically it was a League of Nations hospital, not the UN.

My great uncle Jack was a Chindit fighting the Japanese in Burma.
In his old age he self published his life story, ‘From Dingle to Delhi’, about his time the army and also his childhood in Liverpool in the 1920s and 30s.
I think it is quite the eye opener and has real value being the experiences of the poorest in the depression and the first hand experiences of an ordinary soldier. Stories that you don’t always hear.

Quite fitting.

Did a quick search and found the UK is more focused to commemorate Aug 15 and the US is more focused on Sept 2, the day the formal Surrender ceremonies occurred.

We're visiting the Cambridge American Cemetery next month to honor those who gave us the freedoms we take for granted today. It's always sobering to see how many very young men, practically boys, died for their country.

My wife's father, a medic and ambulance driver, landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day and survived the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, earning two bronze medals for doing his job under enemy fire. This part is especially poignant for me as it was true when the Germans surrounded Bastogne, demanding surrender:

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

I always think about these men and women during the National Anthem.

Because of the sacrifice of so many we are free to enjoy life and travel to places that would not exist today. As said the greatest generation, they did without during the depression and then had WWII. Bless them all. My father was killed in action when I was several months old in April 1945 and my second father lost six years of his youth serving from 1939 to 1946. The ABMC does a fantastic job caring for our cemeteries large and small and the local town people care as well.

the Pacific war lasted another three months and ended then only because of the two atomic bombs that were dropped.

just for date clarity.

yesterday, Friday, 15 August 1945, was the day the Japan gave up commemorated as VJ Day.

The bomb on Hiroshima was on 6 August 1945 - Wednesday last week.

The bomb on Nagasaki was on 9 August 1945 - Saturday last week.

The formal signing was later, in early September.

VE Day is the day commemorating Germany's surrender on Tuesday, 8 May 1945.

As a postscript Flight Lieutenant John Cruickshank VC has died aged 105.

He was the last surviving WW2 recipient of the Victoria Cross, awarded for an action while based at RAF Sullom Voe, Shetland.

Gail: April 1945. Sigh. Particularly breaks my heart as the war was essentially over. RIP your father.

It's wonderful that people are still commemorating the sacrifices of those who served in that dreadful war. Those who served in the Pacific faced some very brutal conditions.

May their sacrifices not have been in vain.

I appreciate your post because my dad served in the US Navy for two years during World War II. Only 18 years old in 1943, dad did his basic training on Treasure Island, California, in San Francisco Bay. He chose to volunteer because his dad had served in the US Army during World War I, advising him that the odds of surviving combat were greater in the Navy. That decision almost backfired, because dad was originally assigned to a commando unit, which usually suffer substantially high casualties. However, his orders were changed, and dad was assigned to a destroyer, the USS Wickes.

The Wickes' first assignment was in the North Pacific. Few know that the Japanese invaded and occupied two of the Aleutian Islands, Adak and Kiska. The ship patrolled the Aleutians and helped bombard targets on the Kuril Islands, then part of Japan but now part of Russia. Next dad's ship headed to the South Pacific, making it as far as Borneo Island, which is divided among Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia. Later, the ship took part in the Philippines Campaign from September 1944 - March 1945 and the Battle of Okinawa from March - June 1945. Dad's ship earned five battle starts, two in the Philippines theater and three in the Asian theater.

Salute to all veterans in the US, Europe and Asia.

Also true of.every war " they also.serve .who only stand and wait" taken from a poem by Milton.

"Also true of.every war " they also.serve .who only stand and wait" taken from a poem by Milton."

I've got a strange/funny/likable series from "Mary Lasswell". The second in the series, "High Time", is from a phrase in the beginning of the book "It's high time we got in to the War effort"; said among the three elderly women friends. They lived together in San Diego before the War and met in the first book. It's a picture of the time of how people felt ashamed if they weren't helping in some way at home with the troops overseas. The whole series is a hoot. Not what I pictured of people in my Grandmother's time.

[snip]
Her first book, Suds in Your Eye (1942) published by Houghton Mifflin, was described as "a crazy, funny story" about three impoverished but high-spirited and beer-loving elderly women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lasswell