Surrender
Sunday, September 2, 1945, dawned gray and sullen over Tokyo Bay. The Japanese delegation considered the weather symbolic of their ancestors “weeping” as they climbed the ladder alongside the USS Missouri to formally surrender their nation. They were met by General Douglas MacArthur and representatives of China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Accompanying MacArthur were Generals Jonathan Wainright and Arthur Percival, both just liberated from Japanese prison camps. At nine o’clock General MacArthur stepped to the microphone to open the proceedings:
We are gathered here, representative of the 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. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the peoples of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice, or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve.546
Each representative was called to sign the peace accords, and General MacArthur then concluded the short ceremony reverently: “Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.”547 At that moment an armada of two hundred fifty aircraft flew over the Missouri, and the sun broke out from behind the clouds, shining on a world at peace. World War II was over.
Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them… They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
—Isaiah 11:5–6, 9