“Fellow citizens, the war is over,” he said.

“The Japanese Government has accepted the terms of surrender imposed by the Allied Nations and hostilities will now cease.”

For Australians, that meant the end of the Second World War. 

Seventy-one years later, the Bendigo District RSL Sub-Branch commemorated Victory in the Pacific Day with a service at the Soldiers Memorial Institute.

Among those sitting in the front row was 94-year-old World War II veteran Norm Smart, who was in the infantry and served in Papua New Guinea and Darwin. 

Private Smart was serving at Wide Bay, New Britain, when he was told Japan had surrendered.

“You could have heard a pin drop… Everything just went quiet.” he said.

“All we thought about for about half an hour afterwards was what the Japs are going to do.

“Are they going to be quiet, or are they going to have a go at us?”

Mr Smart’s son Geoff, who also served in the Army, joined his father in commemorating the occasion.

He said his father had told him stories about his service in Wide Bay, including being knocked off his feet by an earthquake.

“All the Fuzzy Wuzzies headed for the hills, fearing a tsunami,” Geoff said. 

He said his father had told him the Australians grabbed their gear and followed shortly afterwards.

Even after more than 70 years, Mr Smart said memories of his service cropped up from time to time.

Sitting in a white plastic chair in the sun outside the Soldiers Memorial Institute on Monday, his face and neck shaded by a splendid hat, Mr Smart said Victory in the Pacific Day was a time to remember “all the blokes who didn’t come home.”

“I remember them,” he said. 

According to Australian Government website Australia’s War, almost one million Australians served in the Second World War – about 40,000 died, and many thousands were wounded or injured. 

Japan formally surrendered to the Allies in a ceremony on the decks of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.