alternatehistory.com

I was looking at the list of the last veteran of ww1

Looking through this list of ww1,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_World_War_I_veterans_by_country

The average age is about 19 in 1918 and they live to 105 with the oldest 111.

I found the last official documented veteran of ww1 was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Green

In September 1918 at the age of 17, she served as an officers' mess steward about a month before the war ended. I think its a bit rich to call her a veteran but that is another issue. Officially she is.

Now I was wondering who would be the last veteran of ww2?

So based on ww1 what it is, is a person probably a woman who joins the military very young almost at the end of the war.

Now the war lasted in Europe until May 1945, in the Pacific, the war ends in August 1945. So I suggest that this veteran served a unit associated with the Pacific.

Now one point is that many people in the Pacific did serve but the records would be dubious so it will be a problem to them to officially be called a veteran eg China, Philippines, Thailand etc. So I will wipe them off the list plus if I takeout those that had only small armies, that leaves me with the following in order of size
Japan
USA
India
USSR
Britain
Australia

Now going through this list of life expectancy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Japan 83.7
Australia 82.8
Britain 81.2
USA 79.3
USSR 70.5
India 68.2

It looks like Japan would be the favorite, the largest military and it has the highest life expectancy.

Japan has another advantage as towards the end it rapidly recruited large numbers of kids to make a final stand which as a result of the Japan surrender these people never fought so they lived.

I think we can assume based on ww1 figures that the person would be about 16 or 17 in August 1945 and that they will live to about 110.

So that this Japanese person probably a woman was born in 1928 and the official ceremony for her will be in about 20 years time.

What do you think?
Top