The 70th anniversary of the victory over Japan in the Second World War is being marked today with VJ Day commemorations.

There will be celebrations in London attended by the Queen, and by many of the veterans who survived that terrible conflict, although these are growing increasingly few in number.

One who will be thinking of that day in 1945 is former seaman of Guy Huntrods, who was 22 at the time of VJ Day.

He was a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Service and serving as the Gunnery Officer on board the light cruiser HMS Ceylon.

He had signed up in 1941 and had already taken part in two Arctic convoys aboard HMS Duke of York.

Following the Japanese surrender, Mr Huntrods and a detachment of 30 other sailors were tasked with travelling to George Town in Penang, Malaya, to secure the dockyard from Japanese control.

He said: “It wasn’t clear whether the Japanese troops, who in the main were fanatics, would follow their emperor’s instructions to surrender. In the event they gave us no trouble.”

He took their surrender and disarmed roughly 3,000 Japanese soldiers.

A few weeks later, his ship sailed to Singapore where he took part in the victory parade through the British outpost.

It had been disastrously lost to the Japanese three years before, when the enemy had taken 85,000 British and Empire troops prisoner.

He said: “It was a great honour. I and my detachment were invited to lead the parade behind the Royal Marines Band.”

Hundreds of RN, Army, RAF and RM personnel were involved, including many who had been recently released from Japanese PoW camps.

Mr Huntrods said: “I remember having a sense of immense pride and relief. The war was over and I had survived. I had become engaged just six months previously and I was very excited to get home and marry the girl I loved.”

“My chief memory, still vivid to me today, was a sense of outrage seeing the British and Australian PoWs lining the parade route.

“They were so emaciated, literally just skin and bone. I was 22 and I was quite tough, but I admit I was crying.

Mr Huntrods, now 92, said: “It was an immensely emotional period. Tears were running down my face, as they nearly are now just thinking about it.”

Mr Huntrods, of Sandrock Road, Tunbridge Wells, worked for the Bank Of England for 25 years after being demobbed and said a huge debt is owed to Churchill and those who fought.

“We saved the world from the worst tyranny we could possibly endure.”

Mr Huntrods will be joining the Royal British Legion comrades at a ceremony at Churchill’s home of Chartwell in Westerham, today from 11am.

Although Germany had surrendered to the advancing Allies in May 1945, the Japanese fought on.

On August 6, the Allies dropped the first ever atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and three days later dropped the second on Nagasaki.

That same day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria.

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito surrendered his country on August 15. There were immediate celebrations across the world, including an impromptu dance in Maidstone High Street.

There will be a fly-past and Drumhead service in Horse Guards Parade, London, today at 2pm.

Afterwards, veterans and their families will march along Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, where the Royal British Legion is hosting a reception for veterans in the Abbey’s College Gardens.