Australia honours a million WWII heroes
Published: August 12, 2005
The nation this weekend honours one million Australians whose heroics occurred before most of the current population was born.
The million Aussies who served in World War II have since dwindled to 170,000.
Most are expected to take part in peace celebrations in cities and provincial towns around the country.
Up to 10,000 are expected in Canberra at a full-scale military commemoration marking the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Pacific (VP) Day.
Australians fought for six years in all major theatres of the war, at a cost of 40,000 lives, and helped the allies secure victory over Germany in May 1945.
But the war did not end until three months later when the Americans dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It wasn’t officially over until August 15, 1945, when Japanese Emperor Hirohito capitulated in a broadcast which contained the stupendous understatement: “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”
VP Day will be observed on Monday in an official service at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, but most activities are planned for the weekend.
Hundreds of veterans will attend a reception on Saturday in federal parliament’s great hall ahead of a mass gathering around Lake Burley Griffin on Sunday.
The capital will be the scene of parades, exhibitions and military displays culminating in a sunset air pageant featuring fireworks and a flyover by F-111 fighter planes.
It will feature displays of historic and modern military equipment, and simulated rescues and operations including parachute drops, mid-air refuelling and navy mine clearance.
A chronological flying display will include aircraft from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the modern era.
Other exhibitions will include helicopters, tactical radar display, combat net radio, artillery and a Navy dive tank.
Entertainment will include 1940s style music and dancing, historical broadcasts on big screens and military bands and choirs.
The chairman of the VP Day Salute organising committee, Air Marshal David Evans, said he was keen to recreate the atmosphere of the 1940s.
Air Marshal Evans, who joined the air force as an 18-year-old in 1943, said despite the horrors of war, he remembered those days as a time of “unity and acceptance” with an “overwhelming sense of community”.
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