The event represented both unprecedented devastation and hope for peace. It was also Albert Crosthwaite's 20^th birthday.

The end of World War II was imminent, a prospect that had seemed distant when Mr Crosthwaite joined the Royal Australian Navy three years prior.

"I had two older brothers, the oldest one was in the Army, the second was in the Airforce, and I was in the Navy," he recalled.

"I remember working in Melbourne, around '41, and thinking 'How are we ever going to stop them?' - if you got the news it was always 'victory for them'.

"We didn't have anything, that's the trouble.

"We didn't have the equipment - they had the Tiger Moths and everything else overseas and it took us time to get equipped."

After completing an engineering course and refurbishing a destroyer, Mr Crosthwaite set out to sea as a stoker.

"I was on a supplies ship, Birchgrove Park. I was shovelling coal, four hours on and 12 off. I did six or eight months on that, and came back and picked up the Westralia, that was a troop ship," he said.

"We were an assault craft so we had our landing craft tied up on the side ... we took 600 troops to Japan."

Among services to Japan, which included transporting the Commonwealth Occupation Forces, Mr Crosthwaite saw what the bomb detonated on his birthday had done to Hiroshima.

"We couldn't find our way and I said, 'Follow me, I'll take you to where it is' - they wanted to know how - I said 'Look at the light poles, they're white on one side, and black on the other from the heat', and we walked straight to it," he said.

"We only had to walk a mile or so. It's a bit hard to describe really, it was a great rubbish tip, everything was flattened. We weren't going any further."

With the bombing and Japan's surrender, Mr Crosthwaite returned to long-time sweetheart Monica, who he had met as a teenager living near Ballarat and married during a weekend of leave.

He learned about the men and women who were killed.

"They sent 600 to Ambon and 600 to Rabaul, but not much equipment to fight with, so the Japs just walked in and took them over, slaughtered a lot of them," Mr Crosthwaite said.

"But we didn't know anything about this until after the war really, we didn't know what happened to them.

"I had a cousin ... he was in the British Artillery. He was sent off to Rabaul.

"They were taking prisoners back to Japan and the Yanks torpedoed the ship they were taken back to Japan on, so whether he was on it or not, you don't have a clue. He just disappeared."

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Mr Crosthwaite's son Arthur, who joined the Army in the Vietnam War, remembers the gatherings of veterans that happened in his home.

"He spent a lot of time with his friends and they'd all get their heads together and we were excluded from those conversations," he said.

"They talked to each other and that was one way of getting rid of the stress.

"[People Dad knew] were behind Japanese lines and would sneak in to get lids off bully beef tins, scraping the meat off to get something to eat.

"They landed in Morotai and hundreds of Australians had been butchered there, and they had no idea.

"Today we know straight away when things happen ... that's one way the world has changed a lot."

After nearly 95 years of life - 53 of those years spent in Corowa - Mr Crosthwaite has seen everything change.

"I'm nearly a local," he joked.

"We came from Nhill, and we were going up to Surfers Paradise and there was no motel in the town, so we reckoned Corowa would be a good town to build a motel in.

"All the bowling club and green was full, and it was a real busy little town."

In 1998, Mr Crosthwaite was recognised for 50 years of membership with the Returned & Services League of Australia NSW branch.

He was also among veterans photographed by the Australian War Memorial, to document those alive who served in World War II.

And Mr Crosthwaite is not only still living in the home he shared with wife Monica until she passed away eight years ago, but he's also still driving.

Although, under strict instruction from Arthur, he's to go nowhere at the moment.

"He [Arthur] nearly works full-time for me," Mr Crosthwaite joked.

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"All the carpenters and fellas who worked with me at the hotel aren't around any more, so I've only got my son and my daughter - only two places left to go.

"Now I don't go anywhere, with this coronavirus."

Restrictions in the pandemic mean veterans like Mr Crosthwaite and the community members who honour them can't physically share their remembrance.

Instead, fire sirens will sound at dawn across Corowa to draw people out onto their driveways.

They will hold torches and candles as they take time to reflect.

And Mr Crosthwaite will remember too.

"It's all history now," he said.