Japan Surrenders

Today, 75 years ago, Japan's government and military officials came aboard the USS Missouri, anchored at Tokyo Harbor, and signed the official terms of surrender.

First of all, it is quite necessary to watch the video if you are at all able, AFTER YOU READ THE EXCERPT. If you watch it before, it will ruin the excitement of it all. It gives visual clarity to the part of the book I used.

Second, the image I have used is General Douglas MacArthur on the left in front of the microphone with the Japanese officials to the right sitting in chairs aboard the USS Missouri. This will also help you to visualize the parts of the books, for those who cannot watch a video.

I don't have many words today, but I believe MacArthur and Borneman will make up for that.

I shall now take an excerpt from said book, this one being called MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific by Walter R. Borneman.

I quote

 "At 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, Septembr 2nd, aftr a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, jam, and coffee, MacArthur and a party including Doc Egeberg and Dusty Rhoades made the five-minute ride from the Hotel New Grand through the bombed-out center of Yokohama to the customs house pier. They went aboard the destroyer Buchanan for the six-mile trip out to Halsey's flagship. Named for the first superintendent of Annapolis, the nimble destroyer was a well-worn veteran of the Pacific, having seen action from the Solomons campaign through the Admiralties to Iwo-Jima as well as carrier operations off the Phillipenes. In a nod to the US Navy - in additon to Nimitz signing for the United States - secretary of the navy Forrestal had lobbied for the surrender ceremony to take place on the battleship Missouri. MacArthur raised no objections, and the shipboard location proved far more dramatic than a few tables in a hagar at Atsugi or even the old Amrrican embassy in Tokyo would have been. What better statement of American might, as well as the allied powert MacArthur had just been given, than an 887-foot, forty-five-thousand-ton battleship riding at anchor in Tokyo Bay? Over the previous several days, MacArthur had written and rewritten the words he would read on this historic occasion. After Buchanan came alongside the Missouri, MacArthur strode briskly up the starboard forward gangway, followed by Sutherland, and was greeted on deck with salutes and handshakes, first fro Nimitz and then from Halsey. From the halyards flew two flags with five stars each - MacArthur's insignia on a field of red and Nimitz's on a field of blue. Nimitz gestured MacArthur in the direction of the ceremonies but realized that he was on MacArthur's right. Strict protocol gave MacArthur that spot as the ranking officer. Slipping breifly behind him, and with a gentle pat on MacArthur's left side, Nimitz steered the general to the right as they walked along the deck. Halsey followed, and they went to his cabin to await the arrival of the Japanese delegation. 

A launch brought minister of foreign affairs Mamoru Shigemitsu, and Cheif of the Imperial Japanese Army, General Staff Yoshijiro Umezu, alond with their attendants, alongside the Missouri before 9:00 A.M. Having lost a leg to an assasin's bomb in Shanghai years before, Shigemitsu  wore an artificial limb. He moved with some difficulty with a cane, on to the deck and up the ladder to the surrender site, below the #2 gun turret. Told where to stand, the Japanese delegation waited before the assembled throng of allied officers for around four minute, until MacArthur, Nimitz and Halsey emerged on deck and MacArthur moved purposefully towards the microphone, clutching the pages of his well-honed remarks in his left hand. "We are gathered here," he began slowly, "representatives of major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate.... As surpreme commander of the Allied powers, I announce it my firm purpose in the tradition of the countries I represent to proceed in the discharge of my responsibilities with justice and tolerance while taking all necessary dispositions to ensure that the terms of surrender are fully, promtly, and faithfully complied with. I now invite the representatives of the emperor of Japan and the Japanese government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters to sign the instrument of surrnder at the places indicated." Shigemitsu came forward first moving slowly on his prosthesis, and with some difficulty sat down on a chair at the table before MacArthur upon which two copies of the surrender instrument were spread - the Japanese copy, bound in black, and the Allied copy, bound in green. Shigemitsu removed his silk hat and white gloves and looked at the papers with a puzzled look of uncertainty. According to Kenney's account, there was dead silence until MacArthur's voice snapped through the air ''like a pistol shot." 

"Suntherland," he barked. "Show him where to sign." Sutherland stepped forward and pointed to the correct line. It was near the top of the of the second page of the document, and Shigemitsu stepped forward to and signed both copies. He then returned to his place as General Umezu stepped forward. He then delibrately reached into his uniform pocket and removed his eyeglasses from their case. He produced his own pen, and without sitting down, signed with barely a glance at MacArthur. 

Then it was MacArthur' turn. Saying that he would sign for the Allied powers, he beckoned Jonathan Wainwright and British lieutenant general Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore and had also been a POW, to stand behind him. MacArthur sat down at a chair on the opposite side of the table from where the Japanese had signed and he produced a number of pens. The exact number and to whom MacArthur gave them to would vary with the telling, although most accounts agree that he gave the first two to Wainwright and Percival. Next came Chester Nimitz, signing for the United States, while Rear Admiral Forrest Sherman, Nimitz's Cheif of Staff, looked over his left shoulder. Halsey joined this ensemble, and MacArthur put his left arm around Halsey's shoulders, the two old war horses whispering a few words. Then MacArthur called forward the representativew of the other Allied powers to sign in their turn. As the final Allied reprsentative, Air Vice Marshal Leonard Isitt, of New Zealand, wrote his signatures, a dull roar could be heard in the distance. It grew louder and louder and came closer and closer. In uncanny choreography that MacArthur himself could not have staged better, the overcast of that morning parted to reveal upwards of 450 American planes flying in precise formation through the skies overhead.

"None of us knew then," correspondent Theodore H. White later wrote in his memoirs, "that this was the last war America would cleanly, conclusively win. We thought it was the last war ever."

On this climactic day, the dual drives across th Pacific, a strategy that had caused MacArthur so much angst, now appeared to have served the purpose of keeping the Japanese war machine off balance. By the time the titanic sea battles had long planned by both sides - in limited measure in the Phillipene Sea off the Marianas and in full force against MacArthur at Leyte - the bulk of Japan's airpower had been decimated and its army and navy overwhelmed on both the Southwest Pacific and Central Pacific fronts. Perhaps the most remarkable was the speed with which fortunes had changed as a result of the tremendous outporing of America's industrial infrastructure and the sacrific4s of its men and women at home and abroad. In less than four years, from utter despair on December 7, 1941, the United States hadf crafted the most powerful array of army, navy and air forces that the world had ever seen - or would see again. That speed may not have been evident to a soldier slogging through the mud of the Kokoda Trail, an airman flying the lonely skies, or a sailor standing another watch. But on Septeber 2, 1945, no one could deny the result. 

Douglas MacArthur looked once more to the papers he held in his hand and read the final words he had written. "Let us pray," he earnestly said, "that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed."
 

A speech delivered by MacArthur imediately after the surrender, over radio and TV, thanks to the

USS Missouri Memorial website for having it archived for us to read and remember the past with.

One of Cody Green's tissue boxes may be appropriate when reading this speech. 

“Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death -- the seas bear only commerce men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. I speak for the unnamed brave millions homeward bound to take up the challenge of that future which they did so much to salvage from the brink of disaster.

As I look back on the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace. Various methods through the ages have attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start workable methods were found insofar as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years, It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.

We stand in Tokyo today reminiscent of our countryman, Commodore Perry, ninety-two years ago. His purpose was to bring to Japan an era of enlightenment and progress, by lifting the veil of isolation to the friendship, trade, and commerce of the world. But alas the knowledge thereby gained of western science was forged into an instrument of oppression and human enslavement. Freedom of expression, freedom of action, even freedom of thought were denied through appeal to superstition, and through the application of force. We are committed by the Potsdam Declaration of principles to see that the Japanese people are liberated from this condition of slavery. It is my purpose to implement this commitment just as rapidly as the armed forces are demobilized and other essential steps taken to neutralize the war potential.

The energy of the Japanese race, if properly directed, will enable expansion vertically rather than horizontally. If the talents of the race are turned into constructive channels, the county can lift itself from its present deplorable state into a position of dignity.

To the Pacific basin has come the vista of a new emancipated world. Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march. Today, in Asia as well as in Europe, unshackled peoples are tasting the full sweetness of liberty, the relief from fear.

In the Philippines, America has evolved a model for this new free world of Asia. In the Philippines, America has demonstrated that peoples of the East and peoples of the West may walk side by side in mutual respect and with mutual benefit. The history of our sovereignty there has now the full confidence of the East.

And so, my fellow countrymen, today I report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberated determined fighting spirit of the American soldier, based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction. Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound—take care of them.”
 

And, now, as General MacArthur so famously said, 

 "I shall return!"

JAS REXUS, ANNO DOMINI TWO-THOUSAND AND TWENTY