The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was a capitulation. It was the printed agreement by which Japan formally accepted the Allied surrender terms and ended the state’s wartime hostilities.
A capitulation differs from a peace treaty. It records the surrender of a state or armed forces and establishes the immediate conditions for ending military resistance. The instrument required Japan to accept the Potsdam Declaration and ordered Japanese forces to cease hostilities and surrender.
The document was signed on September 2, 1945, aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Japan’s representatives signed first, followed by MacArthur and representatives of the Allied powers. The ceremony made the surrender formal and internationally visible.
A separate peace settlement came later. Japan signed the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, and that treaty entered into force in 1952. Confusing the 1945 capitulation with the later peace treaty obscures the difference between ending combat and settling the postwar legal relationship.