Harry S. Truman was the U.S. president who told Americans in the 1945 V-J Day announcement that Japan had accepted the Allied surrender terms.
Truman broadcast the news on 14 August 1945 in the United States, after Japan communicated its acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration through diplomatic channels. His announcement said that the formal surrender ceremony would take place later, so the public announcement and the signing ceremony were separate events.
The time difference across the Pacific explains why V-J Day is associated with both 14 and 15 August. It was already 15 August in Japan when Emperor Hirohito’s recorded announcement was broadcast there. The formal surrender document was signed on 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Truman had become president only months earlier, following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. He oversaw the final months of the war, Japan’s surrender, and the beginning of the Allied occupation.