DARWEN Heritage Centre researchers don’t intend to let the Covid-19 virus alter their plans to mark the end of the Second World War with Saturday’s 75th anniversary of VJ-Day.

Secretary Albert Gavagan said: “Servicemen throughout East Lancashire went through so much against the Japanese and we are determined that their suffering will be remembered.”

The Heritage Centre staged an excellent display early this year in the run-up to the 75th anniversary of VE-Day which marked the end of fighting in Europe.

That was a celebration; VJ-Day will be a more subdued affair. Heroic fighting by our lads in the jungles of Burma will never be forgotten. But neither will the years of suffering that many thousands of them endured as prisoners of war.

The centre has held regular talks by guest speakers, but because of the lockdown they will be presenting a Zoom show in which the son of one of the survivors will talk about their suffering and “man’s inhumanity to man” as Robbie Burns put it.

John East, leader of Darwen Town Council, will tell of the three and a half years of captivity his father, Jack, endured after the fall of Singapore in February 1942. He will be on Zoom at 7pm tomorrow (Friday).

His father, a Wiltshire lad, did some of his army training in Blackburn and just before setting sail for Singapore he met Betty who was to become his wife.

It was four years before they met again. Long, desperate years in which he worked on the infamous Death Railway.

After the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945, a few days after the dropping of two atomic bombs, he was taken through devastated Hiroshima on his way to repatriation.

Jack finally made it to the family home in a village near Andover – and an hour or so later Betty knocked on the door!

They married and moved to Blackburn and later settled in Lynwood Avenue, Darwen. He died in 1993 aged 77.

Darwen soldiers John Holden and Frank Harwood also worked on the Death Railway. John made it home; Frank didn’t.

Frank was born in Dewhurst Street. He had a taste for adventure and left for Australia before the war. He joined the army out there and went to Singapore.

Captured the following year, he survived three gruelling years as a PoW before he died on the death march to Ranau early in 1945.

John, born in Waterside, was a PoW after the fall of Singapore. He made it back and he and his wife ran a grocer’s shop in Hope Street, Darwen. He never once spoke of his years in captivity.

A couple of Blackburn lads also get a mention; Bill Griffiths of the RAF who was blinded and lost both hands when forced to dismantle a booby trap. He became a keen sportsman and did charity work for St Dunstan’s. He died in 1992.

Alf Davey made it through years of hell and came home to marry Elsie in Blackburn where he lived till his death in 2017. He was 97.

To get involved with John East’s talk about his father’s wartime experiences on Friday visit the Heritage Centre website, www.darwenheritagecentre.org.uk