This month marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Three months on from the cessation of the conflict in Europe, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15th August 1945 and hostilities in the Pacific were also concluded.
Victory over Japan Day or VJ Day was immediately celebrated in most UK communities – more about that next week – but in looking back at the relief shown by people attending such events, we must never downplay the extent of the destruction wrought by the Second World War.
It was, by far, the bloodiest conflict in history and historians have estimated that over 70 million people lost their lives. In addition to the service personnel who were killed, millions and millions of civilians died as a consequence of the bombing of residential areas, war-related famine and disease in many conflict zones, and the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime.
We should also remember that, in the immediate lead-up to Hirohito’s surrender, atomic bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities. It is variously estimated that between 90,000 – 166,000 people lost their lives in Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, with between 40,000 and 80,000 people killed in Nagasaki three days later.
Kate Hudson (CND) has vividly described how, 80 years ago this week, a single bomb destroyed 13 square kilometres of Hiroshima: “The heart of the explosion reached a temperature of several million degrees centigrade, resulting in a heat flash over a wide area, vaporising all human tissue. Within a radius of half a mile of the centre of the blast, every person was killed. All that was left of people caught out in the open were their shadows burnt into stone. Beyond this central area, people were killed by the heat and blast waves, either out in the open or inside buildings collapsing and bursting into flames.”
Many men, women and children did not die in the blast, succumbing in subsequent years from the effects of radiation and related illnesses. One these victims was Sadako Sasaki. She was only two years old when her home city was bombed and, about ten years later, she was diagnosed with leukaemia. Sadako knew of a legend that said: “if you make a thousand paper cranes, you get one wish.” She spent the rest of her life folding such cranes, but had only managed 644 by the time of her death.
At this time of increasing global insecurity, we must never forget the tragedy of past wars and also the devastation of the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (6th August 2025) and the West Briton (7th August 2025).