‘It’s important that people remember VJ Day, just as they do VE Day’
Ivan Little talks to Haydn Milligan whose dad fought against Japan
Thousands of descendants of Ulster soldiers who fought in what’s been called the “forgotten” army against Japan at the end of the Second World War will look to the skies today to see a spectacular tribute to their loved ones on a day that the Duke of Edinburgh will feature in a rare public appearance to mark his part in the conflict which ended 75 years ago.
After a minute’s silence this morning, the Red Arrows will stage a high-octane fly past over the four UK capitals, including Belfast, to commemorate VJ (Victory in Japan) Day, a date in the calendar that doesn’t attract anything like the same attention every year that VE (Victory in Europe) Day does just three months earlier.
But for people like Haydn Milligan from Bangor, VJ Day, that effectively finished the War, is a chance to reflect with pride on their ancestors’ service in a torturous conflict that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Unlike many other soldiers, Haydn’s father, Tommy, survived to tell the tale of the Burma campaign, but he rarely told it.
“He didn’t speak in detail about the war and, as I was growing up, I suppose I didn’t really press him too much,” says Haydn, who has been engaged in an exhaustive quest of late to find out what his father did in the war. And a shoebox has provided invaluable pointers to his exploits.
Haydn says: “In the box, there were my father’s medals, his pay book, a few photographs and other bits and pieces.
“Piecing them together, along with my memories of what dad did reveal about the war and looking through military records, I was able to come up with a fairly decent picture of him and his 8th Belfast Heavy Anti-aircraft Regiment, which was founded in the wake of the Munich crisis and recruited mainly young Belfast men in the spring of 1939.
“My dad was a driver for one of the gun crews. He drove a four-wheel-drive heavy truck, called a Matador, which pulled the heavy 3.7 inch gun over the green fields of England and France and then through the mud and dirt of India and Burma.”
The regiment took part in the Arakan campaigns for twoand-a-half years, firing against the Japanese Air Force and against ground targets, when their accuracy at long range earned them the nickname “The Twelve Mile Snipers”. At one point, the Milligan family were told that Tommy could succumb to a potentially fatal disease, scrub typhus, but he pulled through.
On his return to Belfast in September 1945, he discovered that his mother had died two weeks earlier.
After the war, Tommy joined the Burma Star Association and was chairman of the Northern Ireland branch between 1979 and 1981.
Haydn has now compiled a series of documents about the Burma campaign and about the history of his father’s regiment and the Burma Star. But he hasn’t stopped searching for more information about his father’s early days in the Army, particularly in England. In the meantime, Haydn will follow today’s TV coverage of the 75th anniversary commemorations.
Ninety-nine-year-old Prince Philip will appear on large screens around the UK in a photo montage of other veterans and Prince Charles
(left) will be among the royals attending a service of remembrance. Haydn says: “I think it’s important that people should remember VJ Day, just as they do VE Day.”