AUGUST 1945
The Japanese surrender came on the fourteenth of August, just two days before we left the house in Barnet. The Japanese Emissaries signed the document aboard the American battleship the USS Missouri. It was the final piece of the jigsaw; the end of hostilities worldwide.
There would be worldwide confusion, horror and condemnation to follow after the use of the atomic bomb had effectively ended Japan"s fighting but at the time we just thought it was another late developed bomb, similar in a way to the German"s using their V1 and V2 rockets in a late attempt to win the war in Europe.
My mother, pouring lemonade and beer into glasses in the garden, as we all sat out enjoying the sunshine, suddenly remarked that she wouldn"t really miss the house here in Barnet as she would alwa
