Australian veteran Bill McDonald recalls the moment he knew World War II was over, 75 years on

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Navy veteran Bill McDonald, one of the few remaining witnesses to the Japanese surrender ceremonies of World War II, recounts his experience on the 75th anniversary of victory in the Pacific.

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As the Second World War dragged on in 1945 after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, the last thing on Royal Australian Navy stoker Bill McDonald’s mind was a party.

"We were that blood happy, we had parties," he said. Some of his comrades got dressed up in homemade women's bathers. Bill was on deck with the rest of the crew to witness the historic moment when the Japanese officers came on board.Australian War Memorial “I got a Japanese sword, oh geez, it’s sharp," he said."There were piles of them. We asked the officer, ‘could we have one?’"HMAS Diamantina in Nauru to accept Japanese surrender.HMAS Diamantina now has pride of place in the Queensland Maritime Museum, exhibited in an old Southbank dry dock in the centre of Brisbane.

Every day, tens-of-thousands of people pass her by, some not knowing that on her quarterdeck the last Japanese surrender of the war took place.“I don’t think so that they know much about it because Australia was reasonably sheltered from the heavy war we have seen in the Pacific and in Europe,” he said.

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Is he from the Scottish community of Australians as his name suggests?

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