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V-J Day anniversary will be marked

Events commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the end of World War II will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 15 and 16 at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall Township, Monmouth County.

Events commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the end of World War II will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 15 and 16 at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall Township, Monmouth County.

The commemorations, at 2201 Marconi Rd., will honor the war's military veterans, some of whom will be in attendance during a ceremony at noon Aug. 15. An $5 admission will benefit the nonprofit center.

Lectures at 3 p.m. on both days will describe details of Operation Downfall, the name given to the planned invasion of Japan, museum officials said.

The planning proceeded without taking the atomic bomb into consideration, and its details and estimated casualties will be detailed during lectures by retired Army Col. Paul Zigo, a Vietnam veteran and associate professor of history at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J.

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately led to Japan's surrender.

The InfoAge Science Center will mark the commemoration and sixth annual World War II weekend with the opening of its Military Technology Museum, where visitors will see American and German military artifacts and vehicles including jeeps, and trucks.

One of the vehicles, a Weasel, a tracked vehicle built by Studebaker, will provide rides to children, officials said.

The new museum also will display a so-called Davy Crockett, a tactical recoilless gun for firing the M-388 nuclear projectile, officials said. The weapon was developed in the late 1950s.

The event will include World War II dioramas along with other military displays and exhibits by the National Archives and a Marine Corps official artist exhibit.

The InfoAge Science Center is at Camp Evans, which played a key role in the development of radar as an effective secret weapon during World War II, opened space communications in 1946, was a cold war technology site, a nuclear weapons research site, the birthplace of satellite based hurricane tracking, and a pre-NASA space research site.

The lectures during the commemorative weekend will also describe the heretofore unreported role of engineers at Camp Evans in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.

— Edward Colimore