The Pacific War played out as a colonial war in the Pacific. It was brutal for non-combatant civilians in its path, and its impact epitomised the dehumanising capacity of both war and colonialism.
One ceremony on V J Day announced that the Sumatra railway had been completed, the construction of which had cost more than 80,000 lived and that 70 years later is still a little known story.
In the West, it is often forgotten that 1945 marks the end of not only the second world war but also of a much longer period of political and social upheaval in Asia.
The average age of survivors is now 80. In five years, very few of these first-hand witnesses will be around to remember the event. Many of their stories are in danger of being lost forever.
John Hersey’s article Hiroshima (1946) is seminal in historical and literary terms: the shocking realities of the atomic bomb demanded a new way of writing.
Today’s nuclear arsenals are so powerful that dropping a Hiroshima-size bomb every two hours for 70 years would not exhaust their destructive capacity. The global disarmament regime is broken.
The horror of the human experiments by Nazi doctors led to the Nuremberg Code but the international declaration it inspired was watered down for political purposes.
On Human Experiments – The impact of World War II on the development of human research ethics often overshadows the fascinating history and evolution of what came before.
Rupert Brooke was commissioned in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Sub-Lieutenant. Without seeing combat, he died aboard a French hospital ship, from a mosquito bite that turned septic.
Karina Urbach, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Members of the British royal family were far closer to Nazi Germany during World War II than has previously been recognise, Russian and Spanish archives suggest.
For most British people the Dunkirk evacuation between May 26 and June 4 1940 was the most significant early event of World War II. And in the 75 years since those momentous events it has come to occupy…