Victory over Japan — V-J Day
Japan announced its surrender on 15 August 1945 and signed on 2 September, and the two dates are both called VJ Day depending on where you are. The sequence of that fortnight is compressed and still argued over. Hiroshima on 6 August, the Soviet declaration of war and the invasion of Manchuria on the night of 8 August, Nagasaki on 9 August, the emperor's intervention in the small hours of the 10th, an ambiguous Allied reply on the imperial institution, and his second intervention on the 14th. An attempted coup by army officers that night occupied the palace grounds searching for the recording of his broadcast and failed to find it. The broadcast at noon on 15 August was the first time most Japanese had heard the emperor's voice, in classical court language, saying that the war situation had developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage and that they must endure the unendurable. The formal instrument was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September by Shigemitsu for the government and Umezu for the armed forces, with MacArthur presiding and representatives of nine Allied nations signing in turn. Percival, who had surrendered Singapore in 1942 and had been a prisoner since, stood behind MacArthur. The war had killed perhaps sixty million people worldwide. Britain and the Commonwealth mark 15 August, the United States marks 2 September, and the Soviet Union marked 3 September. The formal state of war took longer to end than the fighting. The peace treaty with Japan was signed at San Francisco in 1951 and came into force the following year, and the Soviet Union never signed it, which is why Russia and Japan have no treaty and still dispute the Kuriles.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
