Surrender Document Preparation at the Foreign Ministry

At the Imperial Conference that ran from late on August 9 into the early hours of August 10, 1945, Emperor Hirohito sided with Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori and decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration on the condition that the national polity be preserved. The Foreign Ministry drafted the note and sent it to the United States, Britain, China and the Soviet Union through neutral Switzerland and Sweden. The reply of US Secretary of State Byrnes, received on August 12, reopened the argument inside the government, and only after the Emperor's second decision at the Imperial Conference on the morning of August 14 did the ministry dispatch the final notice of acceptance that day. From then on the Foreign Ministry was the operational center for preparing Japan's formal surrender: officials drafted the formal response to the Allies, prepared the documentation for the Instrument of Surrender, and coordinated the surrender procedure through neutral diplomatic channels, primarily Swiss and Swedish intermediaries.

On August 17 the Higashikuni cabinet took office with Shigemitsu Mamoru as Foreign Minister. The Allies required Japan to send emissaries to Manila; a delegation led by Lieutenant General Kawabe Torashiro, Vice Chief of the Army General Staff, and including Foreign Ministry staff, met MacArthur's headquarters there on August 19-20 and brought back the text of the Instrument of Surrender and related documents. The ministry then handled translation and domestic formalities and helped arrange the logistics of the ceremony. Shigemitsu was designated the civilian plenipotentiary to sign on behalf of the Emperor and the Japanese Government, while General Umezu Yoshijiro, Chief of the Army General Staff, signed for Imperial General Headquarters.

The ceremony began at 9 a.m. on September 2, 1945 aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Shigemitsu and Umezu signed first, followed by MacArthur for the Allied Powers and then the representatives of the United States, China, Britain, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand. On the Japanese copy the Canadian representative, Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, signed on the wrong line, displacing the signatures that followed; the error was corrected by hand afterwards. The instrument confirmed Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration and ordered the unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces and obedience to the directives of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

Two originals were made. One is held by the US National Archives; the Japanese copy, with its handwritten corrections, is kept at the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the original was exhibited from August 31 to September 12, 2015.