Matthew Perry’s 1853 expeditionary flag was displayed aboard USS Missouri during Japan’s surrender.
A flag associated with Commodore Matthew Perry’s expedition was brought to Missouri and displayed during the ceremony in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Perry had led the United States naval expedition that arrived in Japan in the 1850s and helped produce the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.
The placement created a deliberate historical link between two moments in U.S.-Japanese relations. Perry’s expedition pressured Japan to open ports to American ships, while the ceremony aboard Missouri marked the end of Japan’s wartime empire and the beginning of the Allied occupation.
The flag is sometimes confused with the American flag flown at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack in 1941. The surrender ceremony used the Perry-associated flag as a historical display, while another flag aboard Missouri was an ordinary ship-issued U.S. flag. The two flags served different symbolic purposes.