Whose 19th-century expedition flag was displayed at Japan’s 1945 surrender ceremony?

Matthew Perry’s expedition flag was displayed at Japan’s 1945 surrender ceremony. The flag had been carried during Commodore Perry’s 1853–1854 expedition to Japan and was displayed aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Perry’s expedition had pressured the Tokugawa shogunate to open Japanese ports to American trade. Nearly a century later, the flag was presented during the surrender ceremony as a deliberate historical symbol. Its appearance connected the opening of Japan to the United States with the ceremony that began the Allied occupation of Japan.

The flag is sometimes confused with a U.S. flag associated with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Accounts of the ceremony explain that the prominently displayed historic flag came from Perry’s flagship and had been preserved for display. A replica is now shown at the Battleship Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor, while the original is held by the U.S. Naval Academy Museum.