Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)]

I am truly thankful to be called to speak today. In three weeks, we will remember as a nation the end of the second world war and the deliverance of peace from that bloodiest conflict. In this House, too, we remember the terrible scale and depths of human suffering, the more than 50 million civilians killed, the service personnel who risked their lives at home and abroad, those who gave their lives and those who came home forever changed by what they endured.

When the instrument of surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, a young seaman of the Royal Navy was present. In the space of just a year, that teenager had already faced down the terror of kamikaze pilots and rescued sailors from submerged explosives. He later said:

“You were in that situation, and you did what you had to do, whatever the circumstances. I went in a boy and came out a man.”

My constituent, Ken Tinkler, a witness to the momentous events that shape our world today, is still telling his story at the age of 98. I pay tribute to a remarkable life, well lived.

As the guns fell silent, the world learned the true extent of the cruelty that the imperial Japanese state had inflicted upon its prisoners of war. In Birmingham, work continues to this day to preserve the memory of those British and Commonwealth servicemen and women who were captured. After the war, many far east prisoner of war associations were created, and Birmingham’s is one of the few that is still in operation today. The Birmingham Association of Far East Prisoners of War has produced a VJ80 badge, expertly manufactured by Thomas Fattorini Ltd in the jewellery quarter in Birmingham. It depicts a Commonwealth torch, the everlasting flame, and I am proud to wear it in this House tonight. In preparation for this debate, I asked the secretary of the association, a constituent whose father was a POW in the far east, what words it would be appropriate to read into the record to commemorate him, his comrades and all others represented. She replied with this:

“To remember them is to honour them.”

As the war fades from direct memory, it is important to say here, as we will shortly across the nation, that we remember the war and its end. We remember those who served, and we remember those who now are gone. We will endeavour to preserve and pass on those memories to our children and grandchildren, and onwards to the uncounted generations that are yet to come. They will not be forgotten. We honour them by remembering them. I am truly grateful to those who have made this debate possible, and for the funding that has been put in place so that we can mark the VJ80 anniversary appropriately.