Formal Surrender of Japan

On 14 August 1945 the Japanese government decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration, and on 15 August Emperor Hirohito announced the end of the war to the nation by radio. On 30 August General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, landed at Atsugi airfield in Kanagawa Prefecture, while Allied warships gathered in Tokyo Bay. The battleship USS Missouri, anchored in the bay, was chosen as the site for the formal surrender. Besides the 48-star US flag then in use, the ship displayed the 31-star flag flown by Commodore Perry's squadron in 1853, and her anchorage was close to where Perry's flagship had lain.

The formal surrender ceremony took place on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, beginning shortly after 9:00 a.m. and lasting about 23 minutes. The Japanese delegation numbered eleven: the two signatories plus three representatives each from the Army, the Navy and the Foreign Ministry. Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed at 9:04 on behalf of the Emperor and the Japanese government, and General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, signed at 9:06 for Imperial General Headquarters (the Imperial Japanese military). Allied Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur presided over the ceremony and signed at 9:08 for the Allied Powers, with Lieutenant Generals Jonathan Wainwright (US) and Arthur Percival (UK), both former prisoners of the Japanese, standing behind him. Representatives of nine Allied nations also signed: Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States, General Xu Yongchang for the Republic of China, Admiral Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom, Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko for the Soviet Union, and the representatives of Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand. The Canadian representative, Colonel L. Moore Cosgrave, signed on the wrong line of the Japanese copy, displacing the signatures that followed; MacArthur's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Richard Sutherland, corrected the document by hand. The ceremony ended at 9:25 and was broadcast to the world through the communications ship USS Ancon.

This ceremony officially ended the Second World War. Japan passed under the occupation administration of the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ), and surrender ceremonies for Japanese forces in the individual theatres followed. The United States marks 2 September as the day of victory over Japan.

Two originals of the Instrument of Surrender were made. The Allied copy is held by the US National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Japanese copy by the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After decommissioning, USS Missouri has been open to the public as a memorial ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, since 1999, with a plaque on the deck marking the spot where the document was signed.