Matthew Perry’s flag was displayed at Japan’s surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. The U.S. Navy brought the historic flag associated with Commodore Perry’s 1853–1854 expedition to Japan and placed it near the signing ceremony aboard USS Missouri.
Perry’s expedition had pressured Japan to open ports to American trade and led to the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Displaying the flag in 1945 created a deliberate historical link between the opening of Japan to Western diplomacy and the Allied ceremony that ended the Pacific War.
The flag was not the same as the often-repeated story about a flag flown over the White House during the Pearl Harbor attack. Accounts of the ceremony identify it as the flag from Perry’s expedition. The historic textile was fragile and was displayed with its reverse side visible; it is now preserved at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, while a replica is displayed at the Battleship Missouri Memorial.