The surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945, brought the hostilities of
World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the
Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting operations and an
Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, the
Empire of Japan's leaders, (the
Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the "Big Six"), were privately making entreaties to the neutral Soviet Union
to mediate peace on terms favorable to the Japanese. The Soviets,
meanwhile, were preparing to attack the Japanese, in fulfillment of
their promises to the United States and the United Kingdom made at the
Tehran and
Yalta Conferences.
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| The USS Missouri on the day of the signing, 2 September 1945 |
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an
atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Late in the evening of August 8, 1945, in accordance with the Yalta agreements, but in violation of the
Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, the Soviet Union declared war on the Empire of Japan, and soon after midnight on August 9, 1945, the
Soviet Union invaded the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Later that day, the United States dropped another atomic bomb, this time on the city of
Nagasaki. The combined shock of these events caused
Emperor Hirohito to intervene and order the Big Six to accept the terms for ending the war that the Allies had set down in the
Potsdam Declaration. After several more days of behind-the-scenes negotiations and
a failed coup d'état, Emperor Hirohito gave a recorded radio address to the Empire on August 15. In the radio address, called the
Gyokuon-hōsō ("Jewel Voice Broadcast"), he announced the surrender of the Empire of Japan to the Allies.
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| General of the Army Douglas MacArthur signing the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Allied Powers |
On August 28, the
occupation of Japan by the
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers began. The surrender ceremony was held on September 2, aboard the United States Navy battleship
USS Missouri (BB-63), at which officials from the Japanese government signed the
Japanese Instrument of Surrender, thereby ending the hostilities in World War II. Allied civilians and military personnel alike celebrated
V-J Day,
the end of the war; however, some isolated soldiers and personnel from
Imperial Japan's far-flung forces throughout Asia and the Pacific
islands
refused to surrender for months and years afterwards, some even as far as into the 1970s. Since the surrender of the
Empire of Japan, historians
have continually debated the ethics of using the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The state of war between Japan and the Allies formally ended when the
Treaty of San Francisco came into force on April 28, 1952. Four more years passed before Japan and the Soviet Union signed the
Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which formally brought an end to their state of war.
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| Representatives of Japan stand aboard USS Missouri prior to signing of the Instrument of Surrender. |
