Japan surrenders under the same flag Commodore Perry once flew
What happened
Aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, American planners deliberately displayed the original flag Commodore Matthew Perry had flown into the same bay in 1853 when he forced Japan open to the outside world, a symbol of both the past and Japan's intended future reopening. Eleven Japanese delegates, led by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, arrived to sign the surrender; one of them, diplomat Toshikazu Kase, later wrote that a million eyes seemed to beat on us... we waited, standing in the public gaze like penitent boys awaiting the dreaded schoolmaster. General Douglas MacArthur, presiding over the twenty-three-minute ceremony alongside American and British generals who had themselves endured humiliating surrenders to Japan in 1942, signed the documents using five separate pens, later distributed as keepsakes, and closed with a radio address declaring the guns are silent.
Why it matters
The formal surrender ended not just World War II but fifteen years of Japanese military expansion across Asia that had begun, arguably, at that bridge outside Beijing in 1937, and the ceremony's careful staging, flanking MacArthur with the generals who had surrendered Singapore and the Philippines, was itself a deliberate act of historical closure.
How we know
The surrender ceremony was filmed and broadcast live around the world, and firsthand accounts from participants on both the American and Japanese sides, including Kase's own written recollection, corroborate the event's staging and mood in vivid, matching detail.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. Full Circle: The Japanese Surrender in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945 · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineWorld War II59 events · From a staged skirmish at a bridge outside Beijing to a charter signed in San Francisco, the deadliest conflict in history, every event sourced.View all →