Imperial Japan surrendered on the 15th of August, 1945, effectively ending the Second World War (the official surrender came on the 2nd of September).
The moment resulted in the liberation of occupied regions across Asia and the Pacific, where many sex slaves and prisoners of war were kept in appalling conditions.
The photograph shows an emaciated Indian soldier who’d been kept as a prisoner of war in Hong Kong, being cared for by British nurses aboard the hospital ship Oxfordshire.
The Kashmir Princess, an aircraft operated by Air India, was bombed and sank into the South China Sea on the 11th of April, 1955.
Of the nineteen people on board, sixteen died.
Zhou Enlai in 1946
It emerged that the target of the bombing was China’s first Premier, Zhou Enlai, though he was not on the flight. More recently it has emerged that he might have known about the assassination attempt and so did not board the plane, even though he claimed to have been delayed due to surgery.
The aeroplane was supposed to have travelled from Bombay, India to Hong Kong and then on to Jakarta, Indonesia.
While China accused the United States’ CIA for the bombing, America has always denied the claims. Evidence points to Kremlin-backed Chinese nationalist party Kuomintang as the likely bombers.
In Times Gone By... 