Veterans and relatives remember brutality of war 80 years after VJ Day

VJ Day is commemorated on August 15 and marks victory over Japan, which for many countries marked the end of World War II. However, while much of the world remembers the liberation of Europe, fewer reflect on the brutal conflict that continued in Aisa months after Germany's defeat.

The Allied soldiers who fought in East, Southeast Asia and India during WWII are often called the Forgotten Army. Their war did not end with the victory in Europe but dragged on for months until Japan's eventual surrender.

British military historian Dr Robert Lyman, who has published many books on WWII, explained to CGTN how many soldiers continued to fight months after the bunting from the VE Day parades of May 8 had been taken down. 

"In 1945, in the Far East there were 1.3 million men in Southeast Asia commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten," he said. "Fifty eight percent of those men, about 750,000, were Indians, all volunteers. There were 273,000 Americans, about 100,000 Africans, men from East and West Africa and about 100,000 Brits."

Joseph Hammond was just a 16-year-old Ghanaian schoolboy when he volunteered to fight. Sent to Burma (now known as Myanmar) with the 82nd West African Division, he faced horrific conditions.

"It was terrible. Terrible, really. I thought I was going to die," Hammond explained. "The casualty rate was so high because the Japanese mentality (was that) everybody wanted to die."

Lyman agrees that the conflict was brutal. "Burma was a horrible place to fight a war, hilly and covered in jungle," he said. "The intensity of the fighting meant that the people who were fighting were fighting a medieval-type war. The Japanese lost four or five times as many as the Allies did."

Injured during battle, Joseph Hammond was hospitalized in India until the war's end, and like many Allied soldiers, had to heal before he could finally return home. He recalled: "I was so happy (when I returned), I was on top of the world. Everybody likes to be free. War is not good - war is no good."

Laura Donaghey's great-grandfather Robert Bagwell was a signalman attached to the 12th Indian Infantry Brigade.

Captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore on February 15th 1942, he always refused to talk about his time as a P.O.W.

"He was a signalman, laying communication cables, often under fire. Quite a dangerous job," explained Donaghey. "He went from soldier to prisoner almost immediately. And then began the three and a half years of captivity that would define the rest of his life."

Sent to the Taiwan island, Bagwell was forced to work down a copper mine where the men were beaten regularly. Starved and exhausted, his own family couldn't recognise him when he finally returned home.

According to Donaghey: "He was six and a half stone when he got back. They didn't recognise him until he was right in front of them saying, 'It's me, it's me.' And I think that speaks volumes. That speaks volumes to what they'd been through."

'Guard your tongue'

Those allies who made it back from Asia faced orders not to talk about their experiences.

"When they were liberated, they were given this document that basically said: 'Guard your tongue. Don't talk about this. Don't tell your family, because you'll traumatise them. Don't speak out, because you'll embarrass your colleagues who didn't make it.' And he never did talk about it. He kept it all in."

Eighty years on, with a diminishing number of surviving veterans, many believe it's important to recognize what they went through.

Donaghey would dearly love to have been given the opportunity to thank her great-grandfather for his sacrifice. Bagwell died in 1973.  

"I would like to tell him 'You were a hero. You deserve to be remembered. Don't feel embarrassed. You did your duty as much as anybody.'"

It's a sentiment echoed by historian Lyman. "It's very easy in our modern lives to take all these liberties for granted. But they were secured for us at great cost by many people 80 years ago. And it's for that reason that we mustn't forget them."