Valor Friday

MacArthur’s speech aboard USS Missouri 2 Sept 1945

World War II ended on 15 August 1945 with the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire (the war in Europe had ended a few months prior in May). The actual signing of the Instrument of Surrender would be a grand occasion that happened some weeks later. This past week we passed the 79th anniversary of that event on 2 September.

It took a while to get all the proper representatives of the United Nations (how the Allies styled themselves, which is where the modern UN got their name shortly after the war) into place. Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Allied Commander, South West Pacific Area (SWPA)) also wanted to really drive the point home to the Japanese that they were defeated. This would require a tremendous display of military power. Even after the twin atomic bombings that in a single shot wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an epic military parade was planned to coincide with Japan’s formal capitulation.

A full ten battleships (eight American and two British) were present. This included USS West Virginia (BB-48), which had been sunk in the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, was refloated, repaired, and saw action at Leyte, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Among the other ships were six light or escort aircraft carriers, five heavy cruisers, 10 light cruisers, 51 destroyers, 11 destroyer escorts, three frigates, 18 minelayers and minesweepers, and 12 submarines. More than 300 ships in total!

Flying overhead were between 350 and 450 carrier-launched Allied naval aircraft. They were followed two minutes later by 462 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers of the Army Air Force. They were timed to fly overhead at the exact moment MacArthur was signing the Instrument. MacArthur, who had a decided flair for theatrics, ensured that the end of Japan’s war ambitions would be a spectacle never to be forgotten.

One of the American representatives at the ceremony was Fleet Admiral Bull Halsey also wanted to contribute some deep symbology to the Japanese. In July 1853, 92 years before, an American fleet of warships led by Commodore Matthew Perry (younger brother of War of 1812 hero Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry) entered Tokyo Bay. The insular Japanese had steadfastly refused modernization and trade with the rest of the world. Perry’s fleet was sent as a show of force, which led to Japanese acquiescence to American demands for a trade treaty.

Under threat of war from the far technologically superior Americans, the Japanese ended their more than two centuries of isolation and signed the Convention of Kanagawa, opening their ports. In the coming decades, Japan would rapidly industrialize, westernize their military forces, and set their course towards imperial ambitions like the European powers. This course eventually led them into conflict with the Allies.

The flag Perry flew as he sailed into Tokyo Bay in his show of force had been preserved. Nimitz ordered the flag from D.C. to Tokyo Bay so that it could be present for the surrender. It is the flag in the background on the surrender deck of Missouri, behind the Allied representatives, and in full view of the Japanese delegation.

The Smithsonian Magazine gives us the story of how a young American naval officer assigned to escort classified documents took the flag on an epic, 20,000 mile journey to be there in time;

Commodore Matthew Perry may not have enjoyed the same level of prestige as his older brother Oliver Hazard Perry, who famously defeated the British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812—but that was about to change. In July 1853, the American naval commander was on the cusp of accomplishing something few other mariners had done. The smoke-blowing steam engine of the paddle frigate USS Mississippi, whose construction the commodore had personally supervised, propelled the vessel into Tokyo Harbor, to the dismay of Japanese onlookers lining its shores. As was customary during any visit to a foreign land, Perry’s flagship flew all of its colors, including a new hand-sewn, 31-star wool American flag, recently modified after California’s 1850 entry as the Union’s latest state.

Sent by the United States to “coerce the government of Japan into civilization,” as one 1940s publication put it, Perry’s fleet of four black iron-hulled, steam-powered ships delivered a personal letter from President Millard Fillmore to Emperor Tokugawa Ieyoshi. Influenced in no small part by fusillades from the cannons and rifles of the U.S. Navy, the emperor, the shogun and the entirety of the Japanese command saw little option other than to entertain this representative of the emerging Western power. Further fueled by fear of the European nations already carving nearby China into spheres of influence, Japan’s leaders consented to an official treaty with the U.S. when Perry returned for a second visit in early 1854, opening their ports to trade with a foreign power for the first time in centuries.

When Perry departed Japan later that year, he left a nation on the cusp of change. Japan transitioned from a period of isolation to one marked by assertiveness, embarking on an imperialist journey that culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—a voyage that saw the Asian empire’s ships retrace Perry’s route home. By the time World War II ended in September 1945, Perry, his crew and the Mississippi were long gone, the frigate having sunk during a naval battle of the American Civil War. But even in those closing days of the global conflict, the commodore’s legacy and the significance of his visit were far from forgotten. One man’s wish and another’s epic journey would ensure that.

Known for his gruff, profane and combative attitude, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey—the “Patton of the Pacific,” as some called him—had successfully led his U.S. Navy task force from late 1941 to the 1942-1943 Guadalcanal campaign to the waters of the Japanese archipelago in 1945. With the Japanese surrender at hand, the world’s attention centered on the admiral’s flagship, the USS Missouri, chosen as the venue for the formal ceremony in part because Missouri was President Harry S. Truman’s home state.

Halsey’s Missouri entered Tokyo Bay on August 29, 1945, just over 92 years after Perry’s Mississippi docked at that same port. While Perry’s visit had jump-started the birth of an empire, Halsey’s would witness the end of that chapter in Japan’s history. As the admiral stood on his flagship’s bridge, the moment and its significance were not lost on him. Converging from all points of the Pacific theater of war, the warships of the U.S. Navy steamed by the scores into sprawling Tokyo Bay. As the host of the upcoming ceremonies, Halsey had thought of everything, including a most appropriate symbol for the historic occasion.

A wire from Halsey had arrived at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, on August 23. The urgent request sought delivery of the flag from Perry’s 1853 Tokyo expedition to the Missouri as soon as possible. While the details of the surrender ceremony and its location largely remained a secret, those in the know in Washington—and crew members aboard Halsey’s ship, who were tasked with repairing the damage from a recent kamikaze attack—were already full steam ahead with preparations. Within hours of receiving Halsey’s wire, the museum’s curator had packaged up the brittle, hole-ridden flag in a wooden box and had it delivered to the Officer Messenger Mail Center in Washington, D.C., which sent top secret documents worldwide via courier during the war.

John K. Bremyer, a 25-year-old Navy lieutenant, had traveled a long road to attain his desk job at the messenger center. But this journey was nothing compared with what his superiors would expect him to do over the next several days.

Continue reading at the source.

Category: Historical, Valor, We Remember, WWII