General Order No. 1 was the official U.S. military order directing Japanese forces to surrender to designated Allied commanders.
President Harry Truman approved the order on 17 August 1945, and General Douglas MacArthur issued it after Japan’s surrender decision. It was formally issued to the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters on 2 September, the day the Instrument of Surrender was signed.
The order required Japanese forces to provide information about their military deployments, preserve equipment, and obey disarmament instructions. It also assigned surrender areas to specific Allied commands across Japan’s former wartime territories. This converted Japan’s political acceptance of surrender into operational instructions for forces spread across Asia and the Pacific.
One important provision affected Korea. Japanese forces north of the 38th parallel were directed to surrender to Soviet commanders, while forces south of that line surrendered to the United States. General Order No. 1 therefore helped establish the immediate postwar military division of the Korean Peninsula.