https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/remembering-v-j-day-75-years-later/
‘T oday the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.”
Those were Douglas MacArthur’s words following the signing of Japan’s unconditional surrender on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 75 years ago. That signing ceremony ended the last phase of World War II, the bloodiest war in history. As MacArthur indicated, it also opened a new era in the relationship between the United States and Asia, in which the once-defeated Japan has come to play a pivotal part.
After being America’s mortal enemy, Japan has become the U.S.’s closest and oldest ally in Asia. This is a tribute not only to generations of leadership in both countries, but also to the hopes that MacArthur set in motion on that day.
On the one hand, the ceremony of V-J Day was a magnificent display of American power. On board the USS Missouri were representatives of an international coalition to defeat imperial Japan that included the Soviet Union as well as Great Britain and its Dominions, and China.
Tokyo Bay itself was filled with American warships as far as the eye could see. When the surrender ceremony was completed, MacArthur staged an overflight of more than 1,500 Navy warplanes and 400 B-29s, the super bomber that had dropped the most destructive weapon ever devised, the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to hasten Japan’s unconditional surrender.