E109 - VJ Day

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

August 2020

Nearly 3 months after VE Day, the war against Japan still continued. Its end would be drawn out over 6 weeks between the Potsdam Declaration in July and the final signing of the surrender on-board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September the 2nd.

During those weeks the world saw the use of a new weapon, the atom bomb and both Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be totally destroyed before World War Two would finally come to an end.

To commemorate VJ Day we present this special It Happened Here episode. Using archive recordings, a recreation of the memoir of Eric Norris and interviews with our Veterans from both our official Oral History Project and 8 years of podcasts, we hope to take you back to those momentous weeks in 1945.

10 of our Veterans will share their memories, both happy and sometimes poignant, of the beginning of the Atomic Age, the end of the war, VJ Day and looking forward to the rest of their lives. Featured in order of appearance are:

Sheila Willson
Dennis Gilley
Dr Michael Loewe
Lady Marion Body
Joyce Bogoni
Joan Smeaton
Dennis Underwood
Betty Webb
Gwendoline Page
Margaret Thomas

We would like to take this opportunity to thank not just the Veterans of Bletchley Park and its Outstations, but all Veterans, for their service.

Very special thanks go to Mr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

Image: Wrens in London on VJ Day. With grateful thanks to Mrs Joan Smeaton.

#BPark, #WW2, #BletchleyPark, #BletchleyParkVJDay75, #VJDay75

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Bletchley Park.
0:22.7	It happened here.
0:29.8	Here is a bulletin from CBS World News.
0:35.8	The Navy Department has just announced that Ernie Pyle, the well-known war correspondent,
0:37.7	has been killed in action in the Pacific.
0:43.9	The Navy said Pyle was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on a small island off Okinawa.
0:47.9	This bulletin has come to you from CBS World News.
0:50.9	We resume our scheduled program.
0:58.1	World News Today, brought to you by shortwave broadcast direct from important overseas stations and leading news centers in our own country.
1:00.2	CBS reporters are waiting to bring you first-hand news from the world's political and
1:04.6	battlefront.
1:05.5	Now, here's Robert Trump.
1:07.8	In Potsdam, the Big Three conference continued with a business session held this Sunday afternoon.
1:14.0	Big news about Japan is now being made and will shortly be revealed.
1:19.0	There's almost no end to this speculation on what that news will prove to be.
1:24.4	The guesses flow out of Washington and out of Potsdam, too, and Tokyo shows signs of curiosity.
1:31.4	Yesterday, the Tokyo Radio said that American public opinion would force President Truman
1:36.3	to retreat from his demand for unconditional surrender.
1:40.7	There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed,
1:48.0	with the same completeness as was the power of the European dictators.
1:54.0	To do that, we are now engaged in a process of deploying millions of our armed forces
2:00.0	against Japan in a mass movement of
	...

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