Japan formally signed its 1945 surrender on the deck of USS Missouri.
The ceremony took place on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay. Missouri was an Iowa-class battleship of the United States Navy, commissioned in 1944. Its deck provided the setting for the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, which formally ended the Second World War’s major hostilities.
General Douglas MacArthur opened the 23-minute ceremony shortly after 9 a.m. Japanese time. Japanese representatives, followed by Allied representatives, signed the document at a table on the ship’s deck. Missouri’s selection linked the ceremony to American naval power in the Pacific and gave the event a highly visible maritime setting.
The ship later became a museum vessel at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It remains associated with the end of World War II, while the nearby USS Arizona Memorial commemorates the attack that brought the United States into the Pacific war.