Second World War veterans gather in Blackpool to remember on anniversary of Far East victory

Standards are lowered poignantly towards a replica piece of track from the Burma Star Railway, built by Far East prisoners of war at the Fylde Coast Memorial Arboretum for the VJ Day ceremony

There may be no more surviving holders of the Burma Star on the Fylde Coast, but their sacrifice was remembered by other war veterans at a VJ Day memorial event.

On the 77th anniversary of Victory in Japan, a short service was held in the Burma Star Memorial Garden at The Fylde Coast Arboretum in Bispham, to reflect and remember those from Blackpool and beyond who served in the Far East during the World War II.

D-Day veteran Ken Benbow, 97, who served in the Royal Navy, spent the last year of his the war in the Pacific fighting alongside Australians and Americans against the Japanese.

He was one of the gathering, all remembering and paying tribute to the many lives lost or changed forever in the Far East theatre of war.

Ken Benbow at the VJ Day ceremony at the Fylde Coast Memorial Arboretum in 2022

VJ Day tributes paid on the Fylde coast to those who served in the Far East

The arboretum was given a revamp by arboretum volunteers and the Redeeming Our Communities group in 2020 to mark the passing of the last members of the Burma Star Association in Blackpool. It still retains its Changi Prison Gate archway in tribute to the people held at the brutal prisoner of war camp in Singapore.

The association always had strong links with Blackpool, holding annual reunions at the Winter Gardens.

The service, arranged by the Blackpool branch of the association, was led by the vicar of St Anne's Greenlands, the Rev Deborah Prest.

Rebecca Blacoe lays the wreath at the 2022 memorial service to mark VJ Day

Jacqui Veazey read the FEPoW Prayer and there was a bible reading by Jacquie Hancock, whose late father, Ken, co-founded the local Burma Star branch.

Norman Pearson, a former Royal Navy Gunner, who served in the Mediterranean and west Indies from 1953 to 1966, recited the exhortation.

Standards were lowered for the act of silent remembrance which was followed by a wreath being laid by Rebecca Blacoe, granddaughter of Ken Hancock.

Thousands of troops from across the county were caught up in the Burma conflict, as well as those in the hands of the Japanese as prisoners of war.

They endured horrendous conditions, as did tens of thousands of their comrades and other Commonwealth civilians, caught as prisoners of war when Singapore fell to the lightning advance by Japanese forces in February 1942.