The setting was the starboard veranda deck of one of the world's most powerful killing machines the USS Missouri.. This new American battleship was chosen over many other new American ships because it was the home state of the new American President, Harry S. Truman. General Douglas MacArthur the Supreme Allied Commander officiated the ceremony in front of rows and rows of high ranking American and Allied officers--150 generals and admirals in all. The ship's sailors and marines stood or sat in every available space not taken by the press and cameramen.
MacArthur planned the ceremony with precise timing. At exactly 0850 hours the General was piped aboard the Missouri. At 0855 a launch from the destroyer USS Lansdowne brought the Japanese delegation. A bos'n's pipe shrilled, and the first member of the 11 man Japanese surrender party struggled his way up the ship's companionway.
Mamoru Shigemitsu the new Japanese Foreign Minister had a wooden leg, the result of a 1932 assassination attempt. Shigemitsu, who represented the Emperor and the government, wore a frock coat, striped pants, and a silk top hat. Twice during the war he had served as Foreign Minister. Both times he had sought an end to the war. For Shigemitsu, his role in the ceremony was painful, but he knew it marked a new beginning; from this "day of national mortification," Japan could start "onward toward the goal... of a peaceful state."
Behind Shigemitsu came his polar opposite, the Japanese Army's Chief of Staff, Yoshijiro Umezu, who represented the Imperial General Headquarters. Umezu was one of the die-hards--advocates of national hara-kiri. The general and most of Japan's other military leaders wanted to sacrifice every man, woman, and child to the Japanese warrior ethic; the mindset that forced the atomic bombings. The Emperor himself had to talk the General into going to the surrender ceremony. On the Missouri's deck that morning, Umezu saw the symbolic setting of Japan's rising sun. The General, however, would not live to see the actual setting of that day's sun; after the ceremony he went home and committed hara-kiri.
Toshikazu Kase, an aide to
