Taxi Trade Gives Complimentary Service To The Forgotten Army...by Jim Thomas

A call went out to the "Best Taxi service in the world". 

The Taxi Charity, War Disabled, asked London's Black Taxis to give our veterans of the Burma and Pacific campaigns, a free Taxi service in the same way they do every year with Poppy Cabs on Remembrance Sunday.   

And just as the Armada of small boats turned up to pluck our army from the beach at Dunkirk, our Taxis answered the call en masse (again).

Today's veterans are a generation who gave up a huge part of their life to answer a call of service and sacrifice. 

Back then in July 1945, after the joy and celebration of VE Day in May, people were settling down with their lives. By the time the Prime Minister announced Victory over Japan, people really didn't want to hear about the misery that had carried on happening in the Far East.

These veterans today are very special, most have spent the last 70 years not speaking about the atrocities they were exposed to. Many have taken their memories as secrets to the grave.

It's not easy for anyone to describe or compare what these people went through, especially the ones who were in Japanese camps. 

This day 70 years ago was not a day of celebration, it was a sad day of realisation that friends and colleagues they had stood beside, weren't coming home as they had. 

I had four uncles who fought in Europe and North Africa and one on the Northern Convoys, who often told me (as a young boy) stories of their part in liberating town after town, city after city. 

But I also had two uncles who were in the forgotten army in the Far East, one of whom spent six months in a Japanese prison. I never knew what they had to endure as they never spoke one word of their campaign. 

But amazingly although three were seriously wounded, all seven serviced. 

Many families weren't as lucky as mine and many made the ultimate sacrifice.

We must never forget that it was for our today, they gave their tomorrow.

If you would like to say thank you with a donation to this wonderful charity, please >Click Here<

In the UK, Victory over Japan Day is the actual day on which Japan surrendered effectively ending the war. 

One Day, Three Dates: 

The term applies to both days on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made. The afternoon of August 15th 1945, in Japan, but because of time zone differences, it was still August 14, 1945 when announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands.

While VJ Day is officially commemorated on the 15th July in the UK, in the United States and Japan, it's commemorated on the 2nd of September. The formal ceremony on board the USS misery took place on September 2, 1945, when the signing of the surrender document occurred, officially ending World War. 

  

Great coverage in the Evening Standard

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