Budleigh Past and Present

The Breaking of the Shell by Hanneke Coates, survivor of a WW2 Japanese internment camp, now living in Yettington, near Budleigh Salterton    Today is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and this Saturday 15 August is VJ Day or  Victory over Japan Day. It marks the moment when Imperial Japan surrendered in World War Two, in effect bringing the war to an end.   The surrender meant relief and freedom for thousands of Allied prisoners of war. But coming as it did after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, VJ Day was and will always be a bitter-sweet reminder of the evil of war and nuclear weapons,  especially when used against a civilian population.  In 2018, Yettington resident Hanneke Coates published an account of her experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War Two, and an explanation of how she has come to terms with that awful time. As a boy growing up near Highbridge, a small town in...