King to honour veterans on 80th anniversary of VJ Day

The King and Queen will honour Second World War veterans today on the 80th anniversary of VJ Day.

- SAM HALL RHIANNON JAMES LAURA ELSTON

Royal British Legion (RBL) will be guests of honour at a service of remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum.

Among them will be 33 veterans aged from 96 to 105 who served in the Far East and Pacific.

Charles, patron of the RBL, Camilla, and Sir Keir Starmer will attend the event which honours British, Commonwealth and Allied veterans who served in the Far East theatres of war including Myanmar and the Pacific and Indian Ocean territories.

Ahead of the service, the King, in an prerecorded audio address to the nation, will vow that the sacrifice of heroes who fought and died in the campaigns “shall never be forgotten”.

He will reflect on the horrors experienced by prisoners of war and innocent civilians of occupied lands in the region “whose suffering reminds us that war's true cost extends beyond battlefields, touching every aspect of life”.

Charles will describe how the collaboration of countries demonstrated “in times of war and in times of peace, the greatest weapons of all are not the arms you bear but the arms you link”.

Around 1,500 guests at the national commemoration will hear firsthand testimony from veterans who experienced conflict in the Far East before the war ended when atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to Japan's surrender and VJ Day on 15 August 1945.

The service will begin with a national two-minute silence and include flypasts by the Red Arrows and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster - with military bagpipers playing at dawn in the Far East section of the Arboretum.