The war is over at last!!! Our spirits rose yesterday afternoon, from a low to tops when the working parties came in with the report that Tokyo had made a broadcast of the Imperial Rescript announcing the surrender. All the Nip guards and others were lined up at 2 p.m. and, bowing to the loudspeaker on certain occasions, listened to the speech. In the meantime, our translators were busily engaged in translating the vernacular papers which we got in through our under cover channels. This morning, with no doubt any longer in our minds the crisis came when we assembled for early morning muster. When the Camp Commandant, Wada, an ugly little brute with a mouthful of teeth, arrived with his interpreter, Katayama, Simon and Col. "Freddie" Field together with our interpreter Cyril Owen, met them. Simon told Wada to let Katayama take the count because they wanted to talk to talk to him. Wada, completely off his guard allowed himself to be shepherded into the Camp Office, where he was told that we knew that the war was over and that we wanted to see Colonel Tokunaga, the "Pig" at once. Wada said that the peace stories were rumours, that he had no instructions from the Governor's Office, but that he would try!! to get hold of the "Pig" before evening. He was told that that was not good enough and we would expect him by 10 a.m. This fairly shook the little ape and he hurriedly went away. Field dismissed the parade which was only marred by Dickie Kerr forgetting himself by letting go a shrieking whistle. Of course the whole Camp was seething with excitement at this, our first act of defiance. Barriers between the two Camps went by the board, but there was one serious moment when one of the sentries loaded his rifle and threatened some of our chaps who were going through the gate to the next Camp. He was immediately taken in hand by our interpreter who told him that if he wanted to lose his life, he was going about it the right way! At 10 a.m., Wada returned. He still held out that these were only peace rumours whereon Simon, holding up a typewritten copy of the Imperial Rescript, started to read it to him. He was so amazed at our knowledge that he right there admitted that the war was over, and asked what we wanted. Among many demands we asked for sentries to be removed, all our "isolated" prisoners or those who were still alive such as Boxer, Young, Craven (sp.) Dickson etc, to be returned to us at once, and again we asked for Tokunaga. After he had been gone some time, a lorry came in with another filthy load of vegetables. Ashton-Rose, M.O. of the next camp told them to take the "bloody muck" out of it. The ration men begged to be allowed to leave it. It was chucked on the road and later taken over to the pig pen! In the meantime stories from the next camp tell of Chinese celebrations last night and bonfires. My little sentry Kong To (I have always called him Santa Claus in previous pages) came in to see me and brought me some cigarettes. He said that, although there had been rumours, they had not yet been officially notified of the end of the war and had been told that the broadcast might be a hoax. He worried for he thought that they were in for at least 7 years imprisonment "like the Germans". I explained the situation and said he would be looked after, I can now write freely in my diary without the fear of the searching and finding of it, with incriminating entries. I will always regret that I found it necessary to destroy Volume 1, of this diary because it contained condemning and defamatory statements about the "Jeeps". I can now say that we have used some of the sentries for our "under-cover" activities and have pumped propaganda into them. Dangerous but necessary and on occasions it has cost lives. The rest of today has been a maze to me. Everything has been unreal. One thing I do know, my darling, the war is over and your trials are over. Whatever the future holds in store for us, will be a great adventure for us. All will be new and there will be much pleasure for us in the simplest of things.