USS Missouri, the battleship where Japan surrendered, had the hull number BB-63. It was the last battleship completed by the United States and belonged to the Iowa class.
Missouri hosted the signing ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. The ship’s deck became the setting for the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, signed by Japanese representatives and Allied commanders. The ceremony ended major hostilities between Japan and the Allied powers.
Missouri’s wartime history included service in the Pacific, and it later served in the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War. The ship was finally decommissioned in 1992 and preserved as a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Its location there is especially symbolic because Pearl Harbor was the site of the Japanese attack that brought the United States into World War II.