‘Have you heard? It’s How Birmingham celebrated VJ 75 years ago with a
tions were a little more restrained. Locals were keeping their powder dry for the evening’s street parties.
One Mail reporter, well away from Victoria Square’s wild scenes, told readers: “Suburban Birmingham is going to celebrate VJ Day with the abandon with which it marked VE Day. It is, at the moment, getting into training for tonight.
“After a car tour covering a good many miles through outer Birmingham, one had the impression that parents and children alike are sleeping off the effects of a broken night and holding themselves readiness.
“Street after beflagged street was completely quiet. A few showed
in preparations for kiddies’ parties. In one we found youngsters running properly organised races down the middle of the road. In another, we ran into a fancy dress procession, but otherwise VJ Day is going to be VJ Night. “Generally speaking, the only scenes of activity are the local hostelries. Either Birmingham is holding itself in or it is satiated with enjoyment so soon after VE Day.” On August 16, the Birmingham Post picked over the aftermath of the party. It appears bonfires were the order of the day, with members of the public gathering whatever they could to make the pyres.
“The Prime Minister’s speech at midnight, giving the dramatic announcement of Japan’s capitulation, lighted a train of events in Birmingham that led from early morning neighbourly felicitations to a crescendo of boisterous rejoicings in the city centre 24 hours after,” the newspaper reported.
“Hardly had the wireless announcer said ‘Good night’, hardly had the cacophony of the sirens (so reminiscent of Blitz days) ceased booming and shrilling when, in the suburbs, there was a stir in the streets, knocking at doors, and exultant voices asking ‘Have you heard? It’s over.’
“Wise old people turned over in bed and said ‘Thank God’. But the young people could not restrain their delight at the thought that there was no longer any need to prepare for combat and that the normal values in life were in the process of returning.
“Bonfires were alight early yesterday in many parts of the city, at the centre of which, in Victoria Square, there speedily congregated a crowd which disported itself in the immemorial fashion of bright young people who need vent for their pent-up spirits.
“Servicemen were clambering over the stately statue of Queen Victoria and gaily decorating it. Surely the spirit of the old Queen did not say, as was her Majesty’s fashion on occasion, ‘We are not amused’? “Somehow or other a bonfire was started blazing. No-one seemed to know whence the materials came, but there it was, bright and early. There were more than 10,000 people in Victoria Square in the early hours of the morning, but time went on and vigour ebbed, the mass disintegrated, and the people dribbled home.”