USS Missouri hosted the signing of Japan’s surrender at the 1945 ceremony. The ceremony took place on the battleship’s deck in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.
The ship was selected while Allied forces prepared to occupy Japan. Missouri entered Tokyo Bay on 29 August, and the ceremony followed after a short weather delay. General Douglas MacArthur opened the proceedings, while representatives of Japan and the Allied powers signed the surrender document.
Missouri was an Iowa-class fast battleship commissioned in 1944. Its selection gave the ceremony a prominent American naval setting, but the ship itself was not the surrender document: the formal legal record was the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. A deck plaque still marks the location where the signing occurred.