We've created this poster to commemorate those who served in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during World War II. RAN ships sailed most of the world's seas and oceans during the war and were involved in many key naval battles and campaigns. At home, naval personnel, including thousands of women in the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS), played a vital role in the defence of Australia and in support of operations. This poster was released for the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Display our poster to help remember and recognise the contributions of all Australians during the war
Wartime snapshot
"Fellow Citizens – the war is over"
Prime Minister Ben Chifley,
15 August 1945
On the morning of 15 August 1945, Australian Prime Minister Ben Chifley made a nation-wide address. Japan had accepted the Allies' surrender conditions. The Second World War was over. Victory in the Pacific (VP) Day was declared a national holiday on this day and is commemorated every year. Around the country, people poured into the streets in celebration. For years they had lived with rationing and austerity, they had worked hard and for long hours, been anxious for loved ones on active service and feared a Japanese invasion. They had seen the country change as thousands of women enlisted in the armed forces or joined the civilian workforce to labour on farms and in factories. Tens of thousands of United States servicemen had been based in or passed through Australia, clear evidence that traditional ties to Britain were weakening. The war had left people exhausted. Its end was met with relief and unbridled joy.
The Melbourne press reported revellers waging 'a battle against any show of dignity, or austerity and gloom'. A young boy saw a neighbour in a line of singing revellers, a lady who never missed Mass and always seemed serious but who on VP Day celebrated as she had likely never celebrated before, knowing that her son would soon be coming home. In the New South Wales country town of Dubbo, said a Sydney paper, people behaved in a manner 'that would be deemed incredible in normal life.' On the far side of the country in Perth, some 100,000 people crowded into the city.
There were conga lines, civilians and men and women in uniform dancing together, strangers embracing, streets littered with confetti, flags flying. Police ignored games of two-up and the kind of revelry that would normally invite arrest. An elated population was swept up in celebration. Chifley announced a two-day holiday. He thanked the service men and women of the Allied nations, and he thanked the millions who had worked so hard for the war effort on the home front. The Australian people, said Chifley, 'may be justly proud of everything they have done'. On a day that could never be entirely without sorrow, he also asked Australians to remember the dead and the bereaved. Some 40,000 Australians had lost their lives in the winning of this victory. On 16 August, crowds gathered around the country for thanksgiving services, and to more sombrely remember those who would not be coming home.
VP Day brought an end to years of fighting and the return home of hundreds of thousands of Australians from theatres of war around the world. It meant the passing of a half-century darkened by global conflict and financial depression, and the dawn of an age both prosperous and fraught with peril – as the Cold War begun in the Second World War's shadow dominated the half-century that followed.
Copyright
Department of Veterans' Affairs 2020
Essay on the Royal Australian Navy in the Second World War
Ships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) sailed most of the world's seas and oceans during the Second World War and were involved in many of the war's key naval battles and campaigns.
After Japan entered the war in December 1941 the Pacific became the RAN's major area of operations, but Australian naval ships had also served in the Battle of the Atlantic, the war's longest and one of its most consequential campaigns, and in Arctic Ocean convoys supplying Russia. They supplied the besieged garrison at Tobruk and patrolled the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the North Sea and the Indian Ocean.
At home, naval personnel, including thousands of women in the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, played a vital role in the defence of Australia and in support of operations to the north. At sea, sailors spent weeks and months at a time on duty, enduring the multiple hazards of enemy aircraft, surface vessels, submarines and mines. The war took them from the waters of the Arctic Circle to the equatorial tropics and placed them at the centre of historic events.
On VP Day HMAS Westralia was off the coast of Borneo, having taken part in the largest Australian amphibious operation of the war, at Balikpapan. One of her crew remembered hearing that the war was over: 'Oh we were all thrilled … we can start thinking about going home'. Some were willing to stay on, but most, he said, 'were quite happy to be given their marching orders'. On HMAS Nizam off the Japanese coast, sailors saw the fleet's flagship hoist the signal 'hostilities ceased' and remembered the crew getting a tin of pears between seven men to celebrate. 'Our ships didn't have … a rum ration', he said. On ships within range of Japanese aircraft, crews remained vigilant through VP Day and the days that followed. For men confined and at sea, celebrations of the war's end were often muted.
Nine RAN vessels were part of the mighty Allied fleet anchored in Tokyo Bay for the formal Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945, a fitting tribute to the role played by the RAN during the Second World War. In the South Pacific, in areas where Australians had been fighting or imprisoned on VP Day, other RAN ships accepted local Japanese surrenders.
Almost 40 Australian vessels were lost in fighting against the Germans and the Japanese, including HMAS Sydney, sunk with all hands. More than 2000 Australian sailors lost their lives during the war. Many who survived the war at sea looked back on their service with some fondness. Decades later, one veteran expressed a widely shared sentiment: 'I was very proud to be in the navy and contribute something towards our victory'. Success at sea made that victory possible.
