USS Missouri hosted the formal Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay in 1945.
The American Iowa-class battleship was selected as the site for the ceremony because it was a prominent flagship of the United States Navy. Japanese representatives boarded on September 2, 1945, and signed the Instrument of Surrender on its deck.
General Douglas MacArthur, serving as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, opened the ceremony. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz represented the United States, and other Allied officials signed on behalf of their governments. The ship was anchored near the location where Commodore Matthew Perry's vessels had arrived nearly a century earlier.
USS Missouri later became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor. It remains closely associated with the end of World War II, and its deck contains a marker identifying the place where the surrender document was signed.