The men were uniformed and armed with .303 rifles, their role to preserve the newly declared peace, to disarm dissidents and prevent civil unrest and disorder, but they were equipped with neither gas masks nor protective clothing against radiation as they entered the city.

“Hiroshima was a military centre,” Frank recalled.

“The bomb devastated the city, killing about 200,000 people and injuring tens of thousands more.

“Morale was devastated.

“There was no resistance.”

When a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki days later, Japan’s Emperor realised that to continue World War II would be to inflict more needless horror of death and destruction on his nation.

They lay down their arms and sought truce.

The BCOF men were posted to various regions of the Hiroshima prefecture to maintain law and order, surrounded by children in rags, pleading for food and drink, most orphaned, made homeless in the carnage of the bomb.

“We continued visiting the city from our camp, mainly for sightseeing.

“It never occurred to our officers that we should wear protective gear,” Frank said.

“They provided us with nothing….”

Now a long-time resident of Forster still hale and hearty and the proud owner of a new Rolls,  an automated wheelchair, Frank celebrated his 90^th birthday with sons, Geoffrey and Greg, and daughter, Lorinda, and 40 friends at a luncheon function at the Forster Golf Club on Saturday.

Born on February 20, 1927, with the poverty of the Great Depression about to descend on Australia, Frank left school in Sydney to begin work at The Manly Daily newspaper as an apprentice compositor, leaving to join the BCOF and undergo training in Cowra and Bathurst.

It was during a route march that one of the volunteers said: “America has split the atom. What’s that mean?”

None of his colleagues knew.

Then the United States air force dropped the bombs.

It was August,1945.

Statistics indicate that approximately 80 per cent of the BCOF men have passed away, most from the effects of cancer, caused by radiation.

Miraculously, Frank Fardell has never contracted the disease.

For decades the Australian government maintained that the volunteers who trained for battle while the War was still reaching its bitter conclusion and who were posted to Japan to secure the peace were not returned servicemen, depriving them of servicemen’s entitlements.

The decision has been annulled.

For the birthday occasion, Lorinda Fardell ordered a cake in the shape of a water melon, long a family tradition.

As an eight-year- old boy, in a family without money, Frank’s father borrowed a horse and buggy and drove up the street with a massive water melon in the buggy as Frank’s birthday present.

For a wonderful Australian, generous and without an uncomplaining bone in his body, it was little wonder the three cheers split the club’s roofing iron.

Only another 10 years now and Frank will receive a message of goodwill from the Queen.