1 September 1945
USS Missouri (BB 63), Tokyo Bay, Japan
The minesweepers had cleared what they could, allowing more than two hundred ships of the U.S. and Allied navies to anchor in Tokyo Bay. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, amphibious and auxiliary ships lay quietly in their berths, some teeming with life and sending men ashore, others still waking up, feeding their men before quarters were called at 0800.
Conspicuously absent from the line of capital ships in Tokyo Bay were the carriers. Fearing a trick or a counterattack by hotheads in the Japanese military, Fleet Admiral Nimitz had ordered Adm. Raymond Spruance to lay offshore with his Task Force 58, the Big Blue. These deadly carriers and escort carriers could, at a moment’s notice, wipe out any kind of Japanese military effort with hundreds of fighters and bombers. Admiral Nimitz, who had flown in from Guam on his Coronado aircraft, allowed four carriers into Tokyo Bay. All were escort carriers: two from the U.S. Navy and two belonging to the Royal Navy.
A few bombed-out hulks of the once proud Imperial Japanese Navy littered the harbors of Tokyo Bay. One of these, a titan with empty fuel bunkers, was the battleship Nagato, now dockside at the Yokosuka naval shipyard. At 42,850 tons Nagato was the world’s first battleship fitted with 16-inch guns. On 7 December 1941 she had served as Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship during the raid on Pearl Harbor. After suffering damage at the Battle for Leyte Gulf, the Nagato was taken to the Yokosuka shipyard for repairs. But Yokosuka’s yard workers couldn’t restore the ship quickly enough. Worse, the Japanese navy simply didn’t have enough fuel to waste on such a dinosaur. She was converted to a floating AA platform until, on 18 July, Admiral Halsey’s carriers caught her with two bombs and a rocket that took her out of the war entirely.
A few POWs escaped from local camps and made their way to friendly picket boats off the shores of Kamakura. They described the horrible conditions in the camps and made it clear that a large number of prisoners needed immediate attention. On hearing this, Admiral Halsey sent the USS Benevolence (AH 13) in ahead of schedule and docked her at the Yokosuka naval shipyard on 29 August. Within twelve hours she had taken on a full load of 794 POWs from surrounding camps, with hundreds more en route.
Surrender ceremony preparations had been under way for days. The star of the show in Tokyo Bay would be the 52,000-ton USS Missouri (BB 63). When Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz flew in from Guam on the twenty-ninth, he made the Missouri his flagship and Admiral Halsey politely shifted his flag to the battleship USS South Dakota (BB 57). Surrender ceremony preparations began in earnest when the Missouri moved into Tokyo Bay on 30 August. Admiral Halsey started off by making sure the Missouri anchored in the same spot where Commodore Matthew Perry had dropped his anchor ninety-two years previously. And then came the real work. Most of the ship’s crew was pressed into service. There were innumerable errands to be run ashore and to ships anchored about the bay. Nimitz and Halsey decided the ceremony would take place on the 01 deck, a showplace sometimes called the “veranda deck.” The veranda deck’s starboard side lay under the Big Mo’s massive number two 16-inch gun turret, which would serve as a backdrop. Shipfitters and welders were detailed to build a large platform outboard of the 01 deck to support journalists, photographers, and other special visitors.
An enormous task was the chipping away of the dark gray paint on the battleship’s main and 01 decks to expose bare teak that hadn’t seen the light of day since the Missouri’s commissioning. With extra hands laid on from other ships, the “deck apes” got it done. Then, in the time-honored tradition, they holystoned the newly found teak, bringing the hard wood back to life.
No detail was left untouched. The flag that flew over Washington, D.C., on 7 December 1941 was flown to Tokyo and broken on the Missouri’s foremast. At Admiral Halsey’s instigation, the U.S. flag flown by Commodore Matthew Perry when he entered Tokyo Bay in 1853 was flown out from the U.S. Naval Academy. They mounted it in a special frame on a veranda deck bulkhead overlooking the spot where the ceremony would take place.
The actual document of surrender was flown out from the State Department accompanied by an Army colonel. There were two copies: one bound in leather for the United States, the other bound in canvas for the Japanese. Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu would be the two principal signatories for Japan: Shigemitsu for the government of Japan and Umezu for the military. The Allied signatories to the surrender agreement were to be Gen. Douglas MacArthur, as supreme commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP); Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz for the United States; and for Britain, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, who had steamed into Tokyo Bay on board his battleship, the Duke of York. Other delegates were General Hsu Yung-Chang for China, Lieutenant-General Kuzma Nikolayevich Derevyanko for the USSR, General Sir Thomas Blamey for Australia, Colonel Lawrence Moore Gosgrove for Canada, General Jacques Leclerc for France, Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich for the Netherlands, and Air Vice-Marshal Sir L. M. Isitt for New Zealand.
General MacArthur insisted that two special guests attend, both recently rescued from Manchurian prison camps. Shaken but somewhat rested and wearing fresh uniforms were Lieutenant-General Arthur E. Percival, who commanded the British Army that surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore in February 1942, and Lt. Gen. Jonathan W. “Skinny” Wainwright, the defender of Corregidor when it fell in May 1942. Activity was frantic when later in the day food and bathrooms were prepared for civilians and special delegates. General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz also had large guest lists, many of them from the world press.
General MacArthur insisted the ceremony start at exactly 0900—no sooner, no later. Timing was critical. So was the sound system. Communication specialists tested and retested the ship’s PA system. Movie cameras were positioned. A special radio network was set up to broadcast the ceremony to listeners around the world.
A dress rehearsal was conducted during the afternoon of 1 September that simulated the delegates’ arrival and places during the ceremony. Most of the personnel on the veranda deck were to be flag officers standing in ranks. Three hundred of the Big Mo’s sailors were rounded up to act as stand-ins for the admirals and generals. Grinning boatswain’s mates and gunner’s mates with Popeye-like forearms stood on the deck markings where generals and admirals would stand. Eleven crewmembers stood where the Japanese delegates were to be posted. The planners even went so far as to simulate the faltering steps of Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, who walked with great difficulty on an artificial leg and cane, his real leg having been blown off by an assassin’s bomb years before in Shanghai.
Some sailors, particularly the career ones, resented seeing their well-honed fighting machine turned into a circus. As the day wore on, there was a lot of horseplay and the inevitable breakdown in discipline. But at the back of every mind was the worry that the Japanese would try one last trick, and they would be unprepared for it. It was all strange and different. They wondered if it could come back to haunt them.
By sunset everything was ready—at least for the morrow’s activities. But there was a more difficult issue yet to face: How were Americans and their Allies to set aside their hate and resentment for all the lives lost, the horrible wounds, the time lost from loved ones, and the irreparable damage done to priceless buildings and works of art throughout Japan’s once-vaunted Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? For some, there would be a lifetime of resentment and pain, of nightmares, and sadly, in some cases, of drunkenness and suicide. But clear thinkers, the real statesmen who worked so hard in the background, hoped better times would begin on 2 September 1945. At least, that is what they planned: that the tone would set a new beginning for Japan, her neighbors, and the world.
But tonight there was still mistrust. Japan technically remained at war with the Allies, and the men in the anchorage felt it acutely. After years of battle, people were edgy. Nobody knew what tomorrow would bring. Rumors persisted—would a flock of kamikazes appear? What sort of trick would the Japanese pull at the last minute?
Hardened by years of fighting and hate, the men on the ships in Tokyo Bay followed their instincts. All lights were doused at sunset, and darken ship was strictly enforced. Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the senior officer present afloat (SOPA), ordered condition III watches set. Guns were loaded and ready to fire on pre-designated targets ashore. The younger men fell asleep easily and began snoring. But sleep wouldn’t come for many of the veteran sailors and Marines. They had seen too much on the long road across the Pacific. Many didn’t want to sleep for fear of the horrible nightmares that struck in the middle of the night: the cold sweats, the quick breathing, the pounding heart, the curses of others growling at them to shut up.
Steady on, mates. God be with thee.