Jean Chrétien to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Victory Over Japan

Fifty years ago, at home and overseas, Canadians were celebrating the coming of peace after six years of war. They knew this day for what it was.

General McNaughton, who was then the defense minister, said it this way. "For Canadians as for all our fighting forces, this is the day of victory. Final. Decisive."

You Canadians who fought in the Pacific and are with us here today -- you knew it as that.

So did your comrades of 1945, suffering their fourth year of captivity in prison camps.

So did the airmen of the Royal Canadian Air Force squadrons operating in Burma in August 1945.

So did Canadians, veterans of Europe, still in uniform who would fight again in the Pacific if the war continued.

So did their families.

And so on that day, 50 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Canadians poured into the streets to welcome peace.

For many others August 15 was different. It was a day of remembrance. A day to mourn those who were not coming back. Husbands, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, friends.

And so it is in 1995. Yes, we are here to celebrate our victory and our deliverance.

But more than that we are here to remember.

Today we acknowledge that the peace and freedom that are ours today, were paid for by the Canadians of half a century ago. By the young men and women, the teenagers and the twenty-year olds of the 1940s.

Last year, on Remembrance Day, I was at Saiwan cemetery in Hong Kong where 283 Canadians of that generation lie buried. They were members of a force of two thousand -- soldiers of the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada, from Quebec.

They came to the Pacific as young recruits expecting to finish their training overseas. They landed in Hong Kong in November 1941. Three weeks later war began.

They confronted the battle-hardened army of the Empire of Japan. They were out-matched in arms, in experience, in numbers. But they made up for that in Canadian courage.

They fought with skill and audacity. They bought time with their blood.

We honour their valour today and the valour of those other Canadians, 10,000 in all, who served in the Pacific from the Indian Ocean to the Aleutian Islands. We honour their comrades who fought and died in other theatres.

Their monument is all around us. Their monument is Canada.

Because a nation is a work of building and struggle done over centuries -- each generation confronting the challenges of its time.

You and your friends and comrades -- the young Canadians of 1939 to 1945 -- met the challenge of your time.

On this day we say to you, across the gulf of half a century, that we remember. We have what we have today as a nation, we are what we are -- because of what you did.

We honour you.

We owe you.

We will not forget.