The Top Ender Magazine October November 2020 Edition

Feature
Victory in the Pacific
75th Anniversary
Bridge over River Kwai
Just over a month ago, on 15
August, the 75th Anniversary of
the Victory in the Pacific (VP Day,
also known as V-P Day, Victory
over Japan Day, VJ Day or V-J
Day) was commemorated with a
service in Darwin at the site of the
memorial to the USS Peary on the
Esplanade. Darwin Military Museum
at East Point also held an open day
involving stalls from the Navy, Army
and Air Force, and Darwin City Brass
Band, set up in the dappled shade of
a large tree, set the ambience with
music suitable for such an event.
Although Victory in Europe Day was celebrated on 8
May this year in Europe, in 1945, World War II was still
being fought in South East Asia and in lands around (and
in!) the Pacific.
Below are some of the main events of the war with Japan in
South East Asia and the Pacific – during the compilation of this
list, I couldn’t help but note that the Japanese Imperial Forces
were extremely busy – bombing Pearl Harbor one day, invading
Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines the next. Japanese imperial
expansion was rapid, efficient and very brutal. It was marked
by atrocities still commemorated today, and changed the lives
of millions forever.
Three sea battles in mid-1942 at last caused them check,
and gave the Allies a chance to fight back.
The final blow delivered by the Allies was the dropping
of two atomic bombs, the result of the top-secret Manhattan
Project in the USA. Two Japanese cities were flattened and
between 130,000 and 226,000 people were killed, half of that
number dying on the first day, the rest in the weeks and months
following from radiation sickness. They were the first, and one
hopes the last, atomic bombs to be dropped during wartime.
Significant Dates and Events
1937 Japanese imperial expansion in China and other territories.
22–26 September 1940 Japanese forces temporarily
occupy French Indochina (now Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam).
27 September 1940 Japan signed Tripartite Pact with
Germany and Italy and enter World War II as an Axis power.
36 The Top Ender | Tri-Services Magazine Incorporated