I sent “VJ Day 2025” to a few of my friends, and was very moved that they took time to read and reflect on it. A number wrote back with stories of their father’s or grandfather’s or neighbour’s experiences in east Asia, to add to Caroline’s of her father Michael: a civilian interned in Shanghai, a US GI in China/Burma/India, a prisoner of the Japanese during the war, a FEPOW (far east prisoner of war).
One wrote: “Forgiveness seems one of the hardest things doesn’t it, but perhaps that’s what your poem is calling for when it calls for peace.”
And another, who had spent some time in Ukraine: “I’ll never forget visiting the unmarked wooden cross in thick snow in a military graveyard in the east of Ukraine very near the front line. The grave of a best friend of my colleague and friend… It was a year and a half before they could identify the body. [My friend] was going there to lay a wreath and send photos back to his friend’s grandparents. One story of war says it all……”
And a reflection: “you have shaped it that the line, in groups of three, are indented … [It] leans forward into the hope that, at least, I see there, even in the bleakest of lines.”