Victory over Japan

Reflecting on V-J Day: UK–Japan Pathways to Peace

Victory over Japan (V-J Day), officially announced on 15 August 1945, marked the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the Allied forces. Celebrated worldwide as a triumph of peace, the surrender reshaped global relations and laid the foundations for post-war recovery and rebuilding.

On 6 May 2025, the University of Westminster successfully hosted a symposium titled “Reflecting on VJ Day: UK–Japan Pathways to Peace” to commemorate the 80th anniversary of V-J Day.

Held in Portland Hall, the event brought together a rich programme of academic panels, public dialogues, cultural activities, and personal testimonies. Highlights included:

  • Inspiring contributions from leading academics, journalists, activists, and third-generation hibakusha, offering diverse perspectives on memory, reconciliation, and peace.
  • Cultural elements, such as a moving musical performance and a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which fostered intercultural understanding.

Student engagement through DEN, where students collaborated with academics to prepare blogs and reflections, ensuring that youth voices shaped the programme alongside scholarly perspectives.

A Student Blog: Remembering Through Story

Among the most powerful outputs of this collaboration was a reflective blog by Lucrezia Rachele Zito, written as a fictionalised letter titled “To My Dearest Eleanor”. Told from the perspective of a soldier on V-J Day, it captured the complex emotions of victory and defeat, the haunting legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the human cost carried by both sides:

“Victory, it seems, is not as simple as we had hoped. We will all have to carry this war in different ways, and we must ensure that in remembering, we do not let history become a single story but a shared lesson.”

This creative piece exemplifies how DEN empowers students to explore history through empathy, imagination, and critical reflection, connecting past events to contemporary debates on peacebuilding and reconciliation

Why It Matters

The symposium not only honoured the memory of V-J Day but also underscored the importance of education and cross-cultural dialogue in shaping pathways to sustainable peace. By integrating academic expertise, cultural exchange, and student voices, the event demonstrated how the Democratic Education Network transforms commemoration into a living platform for dialogue and global citizenship.