This is Movietone. Leslie Mitchell reporting. [Music]. [Prime Minister Clement Attlee]: Japan has today surrendered. The last of our enemies is laid low. Here at home, you have a short rest from the unceasing exertions which you have all borne without flinching or complaint for so many dark years.
We also think at this time especially of the prisoners in Japanese hands, of our friends in the dominions of Australia and New Zealand, India, in Burma, and in those colonial territories on whom the the brunt of the Japanese attack fell. We rejoice that their sufferings will soon be at an end and these territories will soon be purged of the Japanese invaders. Peace has once again come to the world. Let us thank God for this great deliverance and His mercies. Long live the King.
[Leslie Mitchell]: The Premier gave out the terrific news at midnight. Comparitively few people heard it. Some even leaft for work in the morning before radio or papers had put them wise. But, it was true and coninciding with the first V.J. Day came the royal opening of Parliament. This was a most appropriate beginning to London’s two days of official celebrations. The cheers for total victory had as their first objective so to speak, the King and Queen. The rain did its worst on the drive back. It wasn’t so bad on the drive to the Houses of Parliament. [Cheering and Music].
On The Mall, through the Horse Guards, and down Whitehall past the Cenotaph, with its memories of that other war. Thoughts uppermost in the minds of many of the cheering people must have been “two World Wars in a lifetime”. It must never happen again. [Music]. Already, all over London’s West End, the vast V.J. crowds were collecting. Those at Westminster were just a foretaste of what was to come. London has it’s obvious rallying points on such great occasions. This was one. [Music]. Piccadilly Circus, of course, was another. This magnetic centre now attracted almost more people than it could accommodate and all of them made their feelings unmistakably clear. [Music]. The third great centre of attraction is the Palace. There, the patiently waiting thousands passed the time like this. [Music, Cheering, and Singing].
Now as the people cheered their Sovereign and his family, the climax of the day was reached. It was a scene that all enemies of Britain, past, present, or future, would do well to note. But it proves once again the unbreakable solidarity of this nation and its long traditions. [Cheering]. It was in the afternoon, too, that members of the Commons with Eden, Churchill, Attlee, and Morrison at their head, went to attend the thanksgiving service at St. Maragrate’s Westminster while the Lords went to the Abbey. It was thanksgiving for victory and for peace. For peace had come at last. The lights had gone up again with illumination on a grand scale for our historic buildings. Where the flames of the blitz had once lit up the scene with the ghastly glow of war, we now enjoyed the peaceful floodlighting of victory night. Tonight, in many streets and bombed out places, bonfires blazed away ’til dawn. In the Old Kent Road, in an open space where bombs had once come streaming down, they sang and danced. V.J. Night in the Old Kent Road. [Music and Singing]. Back in the West End, they were doing just the same but inclined to be a bit more crowded. This was rejoicing in a big way for the best of all possible reasons and heaven knows with every justification. I did hear one man in the crowd say: “in six months, they’ll forget the war”. Well, I’ll bet any money, we don’t. Neither six years of war, nor the few hours of V.J.