VJ Day: UK marks 75th anniversary of Japanese surrender in 1945

FILE: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has paid tribute to surviving veterans of the multinational campaign against Japan in World War II
FILE: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has paid tribute to surviving veterans of the multinational campaign against Japan in World War II Copyright Rui Vieira/AP Photo
By Daniel Bellamy with AFP
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Boris Johnson laid flowers of remembrance and observed a two minute silence at the National Memorial Arboretum.

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Boris Johnson and Prince Charles marked VJ Day on Saturday, commemorating the end of the Second World War seventy-five years ago when Japan surrendered.

At the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in England on Saturday, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla laid flowers in remembrance of those who died.

Britain's prime minister Boris Johnson also laid flowers of remembrance and observed a two minute silence.

The Japanese surrender in 1945 came after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as 200,000 by US estimates.

Tens of thousands of British soldiers had been forced to endure Japanese prisoner of war camps - many of them died.

The Scottish bagpipes were played on HMS Belfast in London and at a memorial for those who died as prisoners forced to build a railway from Burma to Thailand.

Japan's defeat was also remembered in Tokyo on Saturday; Emperor Naruhito led a ceremony honouring the three million Japanese who died in the war.

Although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised that such a war would never happen again he notably did not apologise for the country's atrocities.

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