Someone signed on the wrong line at Japan's surrender
On the morning of 2 September 1945, Japan signed its surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The films and photographs of that morning don't tell the whole story.
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Sources
Sources
- Toshikazu Kase, Journey to the Missouri (Yale University Press, 1950)
- Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan and Her Destiny (1958)
- Admiral Stuart S. Murray, Reminiscences of the Surrender of Japan, US Naval Institute oral history (1974), via the Battleship Missouri Memorial
- William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey's Story (1947)
- George C. Kenney, General Kenney Reports (1949)
- Reports of General MacArthur, vol. I (US Army Center of Military History)
- Naval History and Heritage Command, "Formal Surrender of Japan, 2 September 1945", and FAQ "Surrender of Japan"
- National Archives, the Instrument of Surrender (NAID 1752336) and the newsreel Japanese Sign Final Surrender (ARC 39079)
- Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1948)
- United Nations General Assembly, 623rd plenary meeting, 18 December 1956 (A/PV.623)
- Evening Star (Washington), 2 and 3 September 1945, via the Library of Congress
- Peter Zablocki, Smithsonian Magazine (29 August 2024); Murray Brewster, Legion Magazine (28 September 2021)
Film and photographs
- US Army Signal Corps and US Navy film and photographs in the National Archives; Naval History and Heritage Command; Library of Congress; National Portrait Gallery (CC0); British Museum; Rijksmuseum (CC0). Japan joins the United Nations, 19 December 1956: UN Photo. Photograph of Japan's copy of the Instrument of Surrender at the Diplomatic Record Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan: World Imaging, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Gyokuon-hōsō record: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The surrender deck in 2021: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.