70th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day

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Published on Thursday, August 27, 2015

Submitted photo. Alfred Newton with a Dakota transport.

By Kate Jackman-Atkinson

The Neepawa Banner

On August 15, 1945, the initial announcement of Japan’s surrender was made. On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. This event marked the official end of World War II.

In May of 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, ending the War in Europe.  While there were celebrations in the streets of Europe, for Neepawa’s Alfred Newton and other members of the Allied forces stationed in the Pacific, the war was far from over. 

For the Allied soldiers in the Pacific, it would take until August 15, 1945 before the initial announcement of Japan’s surrender was made. It would be Sept. 2 before the war officially ended with the signing of the surrender document. 

In 1943, 23-year-old Alfred Newton signed up to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He trained as an air gunner on Liberator bombers and graduated from Bombing and Gunnery School at RCAF Station Macdonald, near Portage la Prairie. He went straight to the Pacific and landed in India in the early part of 1945.

He explained his motivation for joining up, saying, “I just felt it was the thing to do, that our country needed to help [the Allies].” He added that he felt a strong desire to serve, “To have the experience to be called upon to defend our country. When you sign that dotted line, you become the property of Canada, you sense that… I feel a sense of pride to have served our country and to have survived.”

Newton was posted with 357 Squadron at Jessore, India, 60 miles east of Calcutta. It was a special duties squadron and they flew Liberators and Dakotas to drop men and supplies behind Japanese lines. Those men were under the command of Major General Wingate and were involved in cutting the supply line to the Japanese army. “We’d drop the men and supply them with ammunition and whatever was needed when they were stationed there,” Newton explained. 

By mid-1945, most of their flights were taking place in the hill country of eastern Burma. Newton explained, “The Japanese had occupied Burma completely at one time and when the war was over, we had them driven back almost out of Burma.” 

Newton considers himself lucky to have made it home alive. “The crew that I went over with, they went out on a trip, I wasn’t with them. I was transferred to another crew and they didn’t come home with me.  They were shot down. I feel fortunate that I’m able to be here today.  It’s something I’m grateful for,” he explained

After the Germans had surrendered, it was business as usual for those fighting in the Pacific. Newton said, “We didn’t notice much change when the war ended in Europe”. 

As the summer progressed, Newton said that they could see the Japanese were weakening.  “The Japanese air power was diminishing, we knew that the end was getting near,” he said. 

While they knew the Japanese surrender was coming, the end caught them a bit by surprise. “We didn’t know exactly what day the war did end. We were actually on holidays, on leave, when the word came through.” Up in northern Assam, Newton and the men he was on leave with were far from the celebrations at the base. “We were kind of on our own, so we didn’t do a lot of celebrating,” he said.

Upon hearing the news, Newton said, “We were happy that it was over alright.”

While the war was over, it took until the later part of October before Newton left India.  For those couple of months, he said they were mostly just putting in time.  They travelled back to Canada via England and landed in England on the last of October, 1945. He had to wait until February 1946 to actually make it home. “Troops that went over there first got first priority to come home. You had to wait until your number came up,” he explained.

Seventy years later, the memories of his time in India are still vivid.  “It was quite and experience, just to see South-East Asia,” he explained. Adding, “I saw a lot of country and it’s an experience. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll never forget it.”

 After the war, Newton returned home to Kelwood and took up farming. He’s never been back to south-east Asia.  While the farm kept him busy, he added, “I didn’t have much desire to go back. I still have a vivid memory of the time and I didn’t know going back would add anything to it.”

Looking back at the war and the intervening years, Newton said, “I was able to serve overseas and do my part. I don’t want to see it forgotten in a hurry.”

‘I was home on leave’

Dudley Lee of Neepawa can well remember where he was when WWII ended on VJ Day in 1945. “I was home on leave for three weeks at  the family farm at Makaroff.” 

Lee was an RCAF bomber pilot in Europe and flew many times into enemy territory. But with the end of the European part of the war, Lee’s squadron, which had been converted to Mosquito bombers, was in the process of being redeployed to the Japanese Theatre. There were 24 planes in each squadron with an aircrew of two each and several ground crew. The whole outfit was destined to go to the Pacific portion of the war when the United States dropped the Atom bomb on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki.

Lee said, “The A-bomb gets a lot of criticism but it has maintained peace in the world since then. The only time it will ever be used again is if a rogue organization, like ISIS, gets hold of it. North Korea would never use it as they know they would be wiped off the map if they did.”

Lee’s career took him from RCAF pilot to machinery dealer, to farmer, to poultry producer. He is now retired in Neepawa but is frequently seen around town talking to his many friends and former customers.

Helping on the home front

In 1939 when WWII broke out, John Waddell (father of Banner publisher Ken Waddell), was almost 32 years old. His brother Jim was two years older and his brother Bill, four years older. Even so, all three joined the Canadian armed forces. John trained at Shilo but took sick and was hospitalized. He went with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles to Debert, Nova Scotia, but took sick again. He was sent home to Winnipeg and for the balance is the war was in the Army post office.

When the European part of the war ended, calls went out for volunteers to go to Japan and Waddell volunteered. He was turned down again, on account of his health condition. 

On VJ Day, he was living in Winnipeg and according to his military records and his middle son’s remembrance of those days, he wanted out of the army, out of the city and to go back farming. He bought a very sandy piece of land at Holland, Manitoba and farmed there for nearly 40 years until his death in 1987.

Banner archives. Len Seaborn displays the plaque he carved while in a Japanese POW camp.

‘Badge of Courage’ gave PoW hope

A discarded piece of teak wood became an important diversion from conditions in a Japanese prison camp for Len Seaborn.

Seaborn, 86, spent four years in prison camps after the Japanese captured Seaborn’s Winnipeg Grenadiers, who were trying to defend Hong Kong in 1941. 

For four years, war prisoners got up at 5 a.m., and began nine-hour work shifts in mines, factories and an airport by 7 a.m. Work ended at 5 p.m.

PoWs were usually given a bowl of rice in the morning, sometimes a small bun with water at noon, and rice again for supper.

Most PoWs, Seaborn said, “laid down on the bunks” all evening, spent from work. 

But not Seaborn. 

While in North Point camp in 1941, a work party brought back a 9x11 inch piece of teak wood from a bombed Chinese temple. It was going to be thrown out, when someone remembered Seaborn.

“Give it to Seaborn,” he said. “He’s always mucking about.”

For the next month, Seaborn worked to replicate the Grenadiers’ Badge of Courage using a small jackknife, a large bolt for a hammer, a worn file, a small piece of a hacksaw blade and a piece of broken glass.

Seaborn completed the badge carving complete with decorations of a crown and leaves, and the Grenadier motto “Adsum,” which means, “I am here.”

To make the crown and lettering, Seaborn cut up brass from his web equipment. The leaves and border are made of strips of bamboo cut to precise thickness and length. Seaborn needed more than 2,000 pieces of bamboo and brass for the badge.

“It was something to do,” he said from his Neepawa home, where the badge now hangs. “Most (of the other PoWs) were laying down most of the day. And all that time, they didn’t do anything.

“I’ve always been playing around, making some damn thing.”

When the Japanese transferred Seaborn out of Hong Kong into Japan, he left the badge with a fellow PoW, Chester Budd, formerly of Kelwood. Budd later brought the badge back to Manitoba after the war.

– Neepawa Banner 

archives. 

Originally published 

Jan 22, 1996. 

Sadly, Mr. Seaborn has passed away since his story was originally 

published.

VJ Day chronology

April 1 – June 21, 1945: Battle of Okinawa. 85,000+ US military casualties, and 140,000+ Japanese. Approximately one-fourth of the Okinawan civilian population died, often in mass suicides organized by the Imperial Japanese Army.

July 26: Potsdam Declaration is issued. Truman tells Japan, "Surrender or suffer prompt and utter destruction."

July 29: Japan rejects the Potsdam Declaration.

August 2: Potsdam conference ends.

August 6: The US drops an atomic bomb, Little Boy, on Hiroshima. In a press release 16 hours later, Truman warns Japan to surrender or "...expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

August 9: USSR declares war on Japan and starts Operation August Storm. The US drops another atomic bomb, Fat Man, on Nagasaki.

August 15: Japan surrenders. Date is described as "V-J Day" in newspapers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

September 2: Official surrender ceremony; President Truman declares September 2 as the official "V-J Day".

September 8, 1951: 48 countries including Japan and most of the Allies sign the Treaty of San Francisco

April 28, 1952: The Treaty of San Francisco goes into effect, formally ending the state of war between Japan and most of the Allied countries.