The Instrument of Surrender was signed on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Foreign Minister Shigemitsu and General Umezu for Japan, and by MacArthur and representatives of nine Allied nations. The ceremony took about twenty minutes and formally ended the Second World War. Occupation troops had begun landing in Japan four days earlier.
The Japanese delegation comes aboard Missouri shortly before 09:00; Shigemitsu signs at 09:04 and MacArthur for the Allied powers after him.
As the ceremony ends, hundreds of carrier aircraft and B-29s fly over the bay.
Yamashita capitulates to American forces at Kiangan in northern Luzon, signing the formal instrument the next day at Baguio; separate surrenders follow across South-East Asia through September.
Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, on board USS Missouri (BB-63), 2 September 1945. Lieutenant General Richard K. Sutherland, U.S. Army, waArmy Signal Corps photographer LT. Stephen E. Korpanty; restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domain · sourceA leaflet dropped from a B-29 on Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima. Translation: Notice to the Japanese People! Evacuate the city immediately. What this leaflet contains is extremely important, so please read carefullMark Pellegrini · Public domain · sourceMavis and Harry Beanham looking at the headlines on The Sun newspaper at Balls Head, Waverton, 15 August 1945. Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, announcing its unconditional surrender to the Allies. ThHarry Beanham · Public domain · sourceFor documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Potsdamer Konferenz, Konferenztisch Zentralbild Potsdamer (UnknownUnknown · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · source
