Wagga's Arthur Briggs was only 12 years old, living in Young, when he heard the news over the radio.

Mr Briggs said the entire town was "overjoyed" and were celebrating in the streets after hearing the Prime Minister announce that the war had ended.

"As soon as that happened I heard the fire engines starting to sound off their sirens, the church bells started to ring, people in motorcars were sounding off their horns. People were opening and slamming their doors, people running out in the street," he said.

The celebrations continued to the next day where Mr Briggs said there was a huge parade down the main street with all the different sporting clubs and a band playing.

Even as a 12-year-old, Mr Briggs said he understood the significance of that day because his two older brothers were called to serve.

"All the playgrounds at the schools were dug up as trenches because they were concerned about spy planes flying over," he said.

"On top of that, the Japanese prisoner of war camp was not far from Young. Sometimes, the trains would come through ... and if you wanted to see we would rush down to the rail-line after school."

"There were a lot of shortages for food too. People were supplied with coupon cards ... and if they were already cut out you couldn't buy."

For WWII veteran Bert Adams, who is 96 years old, he can still remember the day the war ended quite well.

Having finished his tour of operations, Mr Adams said he became a navigation instructor for the airforce based in England near the end of the war.

"The day they dropped the atom bomb I was actually in a classroom with the other navigators," he said. "So that was the end of the class and we went to the mess hall and started drinking."

However, it was some time before Mr Adams was able to return home to Australia. He said they filled their time flying surplus airplanes to various places before a ship was able to take him home.

Wagga's Monro Preuss, who is also a veteran of WWII, worked in radio maintenance for aircrafts during the war. But he said he does not remember much at all from the day the war ended because his work still continued for another six months.

He said there was "still trouble going on" after the end of the war, which was classified and flight crews still required people to check over their radios.

Both Mr Preuss and Mr Adams will receive medallions at a commemorative service tomorrow morning.