The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was the written agreement that formalized the surrender of the Empire of Japan, marking the end of hostilities in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. It was signed by representatives from the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitu ...

and from the Allied nations: the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, the Republic of China,The Republic of China was the only government of China until the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

was promulgated in 1949. the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, the

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, the

Commonwealth of Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

, the Dominion of Canada, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, the

Kingdom of the Netherlands , national_anthem = ) , image_map = Kingdom of the Netherlands (orthographic projection).svg , map_width = 250px , image_map2 = File:KonDerNed-10-10-10.png , map_caption2 = Map of the four constituent countries shown to scale , capital = ...

, and the Dominion of New Zealand. The signing took place on the deck of in

Tokyo Bay is a bay located in the southern Kantō region of Japan, and spans the coasts of Tokyo, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Chiba Prefecture. Tokyo Bay is connected to the Pacific Ocean by the Uraga Channel. The Tokyo Bay region is both the most populous ...

on 2 September 1945. The date is sometimes known as

Victory over Japan Day Victory over Japan Day (also known as V-J Day, Victory in the Pacific Day, or V-P Day) is the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect bringing the war to an end. The term has been applied to both of the days on ...

, although that designation more frequently refers to the date of Emperor Hirohito's ''

Gyokuon-hōsō The was a radio broadcast of surrender given by Japanese Emperor Hirohito (Shōwa) on August 15, 1945. It announced to the Japanese people that the Japanese Government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender o ...

'' (Imperial Rescript of Surrender), the radio broadcast announcement of the acceptance of the terms of the

Potsdam Declaration The Potsdam Declaration, or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, was a statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, Uni ...

at noon

Japan Standard Time , or , is the standard time zone in Japan, 9 hours ahead of UTC ( UTC+09:00). Japan does not observe daylight saving time, though its introduction has been debated on several occasions. During World War II, the time zone was often referred to ...

on 15 August.

Preparation

General Douglas MacArthur's staff, headed by Colonel LeGrande A. Diller, were tasked to prepare the draft of the Instrument of Surrender. This was a challenge given resources were limited in war-torn

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

. Nevertheless, an enterprising staff member found rare parchment in a basement of a monastery, and this was given to MacArthur's printer.

Surrender ceremony

The ceremony aboard the deck of the ''Missouri'' lasted 23 minutes and was broadcast throughout the world. It occurred at in

. The instrument was first signed by the Japanese foreign minister

Mamoru Shigemitsu was a Japanese diplomat and politician in the Empire of Japan, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs three times during and after World War II as well as the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan. As civilian plenipotentiary representing the J ...

"By Command and on behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Government" (9:04 a.m.). General

Yoshijirō Umezu (January 4, 1882 – January 8, 1949) was a Japanese general in World War II and Chief of the Army General Staff during the final years of the conflict. He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. Biography Early life a ...

, Chief of the Army General Staff, then signed the document "By Command and on behalf of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters" (9:06 a.m.). The Japanese representatives present for the signing were the following: * Foreign Minister

* General

, Chief of the Army General Staff * Major General Yatsuji Nagai *

Katsuo Okazaki was a Japanese sportsman, diplomat and political figure. He served as the Japanese foreign minister in the 1950s. He was also the final – and only Japanese – chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council. Early life Okazaki was born on 10 Ju ...

(Foreign Ministry) * Rear Admiral Tadatoshi Tomioka * Toshikazu Kase (Foreign Ministry) * Lt. General Suichi Miyakazi * Rear Admiral Ichiro Yokoyama * Saburo Ota (Foreign Ministry) * Captain Katsuo Shiba (Navy) * Colonel Kaziyi Sugita At 9:08 a.m., American General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the Commander in the Southwest Pacific and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, accepted the surrender on behalf of the Allied Powers and signed in his capacity as Supreme Commander. After MacArthur, the following representatives signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of each of the Allied Powers: * Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States (9:12 a.m.) *

General A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED ...

Hsu Yung-chang for China (9:13 a.m.) * Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom (9:14 a.m.) *

Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

Kuzma Derevyanko for the Soviet Union (9:16 a.m.)The Soviet Union had only declared war on Japan a month earlier, after the Hiroshima bombing. *

Sir

Thomas Blamey Field marshal (Australia), Field Marshal Sir Thomas Albert Blamey, (24 January 1884 – 27 May 1951) was an Australian general of the First World War, First and Second World Wars, and the only Australian to attain the rank of field marshal. Bl ...

for Australia (9:17 a.m.) *

Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge o ...

Lawrence Moore Cosgrave Colonel Lawrence Vincent Moore Cosgrave, (August 28, 1890 – July 28, 1971) was a Canadians, Canadian soldier and diplomat. He was the Canadian signatory to the Japanese Instrument of Surrender at the end of World War II. Early life Cosgrav ...

for Canada (9:18 a.m.) *

Général de Corps d'Armée An army corps general or corps general is a rank held by a General officer who commands an army corps. The rank originates from the French (Revolutionary) System, and is used by a number of countries. Normally, the rank is above the divisional ge ...

Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque Philippe François Marie Leclerc de Hauteclocque (22 November 1902 – 28 November 1947) was a Free-French general during the Second World War. He became Marshal of France posthumously in 1952, and is known in France simply as le maréchal ...

for France (9:20 a.m.) *

Lieutenant Admiral Lieutenant admiral () is a senior naval military rank in the Royal Netherlands Navy. The rank is a four-star rank, senior to a vice-admiral () and equivalent to admiral in most foreign navies. It is used whenever the Dutch Chief of Defence is fro ...

C. E. L. Helfrich for the Netherlands (9:21 a.m.) *

Air Vice-Marshal Air vice-marshal (AVM) is a two-star air officer rank which originated in and continues to be used by the Royal Air Force. The rank is also used by the air forces of many countries which have historical British influence and it is sometimes ...

Leonard M. Isitt for New Zealand (9:22 a.m.) The UK invited

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governments to send representatives to the ceremony as subordinates to its own. MacArthur supported the government of Australia's demand to attend and sign separately from the UK, although Australia objected to his recommendation that Canada, the Netherlands, and France also sign the document. On 6 September, Colonel Bernard Theilen took the document and an imperial rescript to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, and presented them to President Harry S. Truman in a formal

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

ceremony the following day. The documents were then exhibited at the National Archives.

Flags at the ceremony

The deck of the ''Missouri'' was furnished with two American flags. A commonly heard story is that one of the flags had flown over the

on the day

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the R ...

was attacked. However, Captain Stuart Murray of USS ''Missouri'' explained: That special flag on the veranda deck of the ''Missouri'' had been flown from Commodore Matthew Perry's flagship in 1853–54 when he led the U.S. Navy's Far East Squadron into

to force the opening of Japan's ports to foreign trade. MacArthur was a direct descendant of the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

Perry family and cousin of Commodore Matthew Perry. Photographs of the signing ceremony show that this flag is displayed reverse side showing (stars in the upper right corner). This was because American flags on the right of an object plane, ship, or person have the stars on the upper right corner, to look like the flag is heading into as if attached to a pole and someone is carrying it. Stars in the upper left of a flag displayed on the right side of the object could make the flag look like it were going away from battle. The cloth of the historic flag was so fragile that the conservator at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum directed that a protective backing be sewn on it, leaving its "wrong side" visible; and this was how Perry's 31-star flag was presented on this unique occasion. A replica of this historic flag can be seen today on the Surrender Deck of the Battleship ''Missouri'' Memorial in Pearl Harbor. This replica is also placed in the same location on the bulkhead of the veranda deck where it had been initially mounted on the morning of 2 September 1945, by Chief Carpenter Fred Miletich. The original flag is still on display at the Naval Academy Museum, as is the table and tablecloth upon which the instrument of surrender was signed, and the original bronze plaque marking the location of the signing (which was replaced by two replicas in 1990). However, it is not certain that the table is the actual one used as the deck had been cleaned and items returned to storage before anyone thought to save it.

Differences between versions

The Japanese copy of the treaty varied from the Allied in the following ways: * The Allied copy was presented in

leather Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffalo, pigs and hog ...

and

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

lining with both countries' seals printed on the front, whereas the Japanese copy was bound in rough canvas with no seals on the front. * The Canadian representative, Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, signed below his line instead of above it on the Allied copy, so everyone after him had to sign one line below the intended one. This was attributed to Cosgrave being blind in one eye from a

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

injury. When the discrepancy was pointed out to General Sutherland, he crossed out the pre-printed name titles of the Allied nations and rewrote by hand the titles in their correct relative positions. The Japanese initially found this alteration unacceptable—until Sutherland initialed (as an abbreviated signature) each alteration. The Japanese representatives did not complain further.,

Current locations

The Allied copy of the Instrument is at the United States

National Archives Building The National Archives Building, known informally as Archives I, is the headquarters of the United States National Archives and Records Administration. It is located north of the National Mall at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, ...

The Japanese copy is at the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in Tokyo, and was last publicly displayed in 2015, as part of an exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of the signing. A replica version of the Japanese copy can be viewed at the archive's gallery, and at the

Edo-Tokyo Museum The is a historical museum located at 1-4-1 Yokoami, Sumida-Ku, Tokyo in the Ryogoku district. The museum opened in March 1993 to preserve Edo's cultural heritage, and features city models of Edo and Tokyo between 1590 (just prior to the ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. Gen. MacArthur originally had 11 full-sized facsimiles made of the Instrument of Surrender, but later increased this for distribution among the Allied nations present during the signing. Two of the copies which were given to Col. LeGrande A. Diller and MGen.

Basilio Valdes Basilio José Segundo "Basil" Pica Valdés (10 July 1892 – 26 January 1970) was a Filipino doctor, general and minister. Valdes was chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1939, and was in 1941 appointed ...

for the Philippines are now displayed at

The International Museum of World War II The International Museum of World War II was a nonprofit museum devoted to World War II located in Natick, Massachusetts, a few miles west of Boston. It was formed over a period of more than 50 years by its founder, Kenneth W. Rendell, one of the ...

in Natick, Massachusetts. As witnesses, American general Jonathan Wainwright, who had surrendered the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, and British lieutenant-general

Arthur Percival Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, (26 December 1887 – 31 January 1966) was a senior British Army officer. He saw service in the First World War and built a successful military career during the interwar period but is most noted fo ...

, who had surrendered Singapore, received two of the six pens used by General MacArthur to sign the instrument. Another pen went to the

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

military academy, and one to MacArthur's aide. All of the pens used by MacArthur were black, except the last, which was bright red and went to his wife. A replica of it, along with copies of the instrument of surrender, is in a case on ''Missouri'' by the plaque marking the signing spot. The model of USS ''Missouri'' in the

National Museum of the United States Navy The National Museum of the United States Navy, or U.S. Navy Museum for short, is the flagship museum of the United States Navy and is located in the former Breech Mechanism Shop of the old Naval Gun Factory on the grounds of the Washington Navy Y ...

at the

Washington Navy Yard The Washington Navy Yard (WNY) is the former shipyard and Weapon, ordnance plant of the United States Navy in Southeast, Washington, D.C., Southeast Washington, D.C. It is the oldest shore establishment of the U.S. Navy. The Yard currently serv ...

, has a scale replica of the signing table in the correct location.

Gallery

Image:Allied battleships in Sagami Bay 28 Aug 1945.jpg, Ships of U.S. Third Fleet and

British Pacific Fleet The British Pacific Fleet (BPF) was a Royal Navy formation that saw action against Japan during the Second World War. The fleet was composed of empire naval vessels. The BPF formally came into being on 22 November 1944 from the remaining ships o ...

in Sagami Wan, 28 August 1945, preparing for the formal Japanese surrender. Nearest ship is . is just beyond, with further in. is in far center distance. Mount Fuji is in the background. Image:SC 212246 Surrender of Japan, Tokyo Bay, 2 September 1945.tif, Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland, aboard USS ''Missouri'', corrects a signatory error in the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. US Colonel Sidney Mashbir and Japanese Foreign Minister

look on. Image:MissouriPlaque.png, Plaque over the door to the Captain's Cabin on board the ''Missouri'' marking the signing Image:Surrender Plaque USS Missouri (BB-63).jpg, Plaque in the deck of the ''Missouri'' marking the location of the signing Image:Missouri-flyover.jpg, Huge formation of American planes over USS ''Missouri'' and Tokyo Bay celebrating the signing, 2 September 1945 Image:USS Missouri Tokyo Bay.jpg, Photo taken from an airplane flying over USS ''Missouri''. is alongside.

Notes

References

External links

National Archives & Records Administration Featured Document

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20051125131001/http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=warfare%2FJapanese+Surrender Alsos Digital Library bibliography of references on Japan's surrender* {{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Instrument Of Surrender 1945 in Japan 1945 documents Aftermath of World War II in Japan Australia–Japan military relations Canada–Japan relations China–Japan relations France–Japan relations Japan in World War II Japan–Netherlands relations Japan–New Zealand relations Japan–Soviet Union relations Japan–United Kingdom military relations Japan–United States military relations Occupied Japan September 1945 events in Asia Surrender of Japan Surrenders World War II documents