A Japanese diplomat in a morning coat and top hat stepped onto the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, bracing for the worst humiliation....Then General Douglas MacArthur opened the ceremony. "It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind...

Nov 13, 2026 | NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯 @japan_nobunaga

[ransomnote]

NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯
@japan_nobunaga
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10h
A Japanese diplomat in a morning coat and top hat stepped onto the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, bracing for the worst humiliation.

His name was Toshikazu Kase. He had passed the Japanese Foreign Service examination in 1925 and studied at Amherst and Harvard. He had been on duty at the Foreign Ministry on the weekend of Pearl Harbor, and had helped prepare the document breaking off negotiations with the United States. Now, on an American battleship, he was there to end the war.

It was Kase who had suggested the civilian delegation wear formal diplomatic attire of morning dress and top hats, because they were representing their sovereign. It was Kase who had drafted the English text of the document accepting the Potsdam Declaration.

With him was Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu. Thirteen years earlier in Shanghai, a bomb had taken Shigemitsu's right leg. He had walked on a wooden leg and a cane ever since. He had to be helped up the ladder. A photographer recalled that in the silence of the deck, you could hear the wooden leg.

Around the Missouri sat about 250 Allied vessels. More than 800 American aircraft were about to pass overhead.

Then General Douglas MacArthur opened the ceremony.

"It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice."

He closed with: "Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed."

Freedom. Tolerance. Justice.

Kase wrote in his 1950 book Journey to the Missouri that he had boarded expecting the worst humiliation, and that the victor's speech, asking for those three things instead of revenge, left him spellbound.

That same day, he wrote the report on the ceremony for the Emperor.

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[sushiman]

My uncle was on the Missouri that day .

[TexasFreeper2009]

we stand on the shoulders of giants

[Governor Dinwiddie]

General MacArthur has been slagged for years by leftists, and communists, and democrats. That includes FDR, and Truman. MacArthur would have saved us from the Chinese dominated world, where slanty eyed scheming Chinamen plot 7 days a week to destroy the United States.

[Leaning Right]

MacArthur wasn’t out for revenge. But he made damn sure General Wainwright was present at the ceremony. Wainwright had defended Corregidor after MacArther withdrew from the area.

Wainwright was treated horribly by the Japanese, and was skin and bones when he was liberated from a prison camp in Manchuria.

[Tacrolimus1mg]

When people had class. I go out in public and see grown adults in their PJ’s on the regular. If you’re sick with the flu or just had surgery, that’s one thing, but it’s SO COMMON. Even teenage girls do this. I wouldn’t have been caught dead in my PJ’s at 16. Have some feminine pride.

How things have changed.

[dadfly]

liberation (and survival) for 95% of my mom’s class of enslaved Japanese. Hirohito deserves some thanks for halting the homeland defense plan.

but, now, who’s left to liberate us?

[llevrok]

If I recall correctly, the flag flown over Commodore Perry’s ship that sailed into Yokohama in 1853 was displayed on the bridge of the MIssouri as well.

[T-Bird45]

I wish Wainwright had recorded his thoughts that day of seeing the Japanese contingent in their finery, knowing their soldiers had reduced him to a wraith who was barely clothed in tattered rags when he was liberated.

[lee martell]

General MacArthur already had the power as victor in the war, he was wise and diplomatic enough to show diplomacy.
It was smart to allow all Japanese leaders present to maintain a modicum of dignity and ‘Save Face’ amongst their own people to some degree.

To figuratively rub the Japanese noses in their defeat would have whipped up a new wave of Japanese citizen rebellion, benefiting no one on either side.

[Dr. Sivana]

I go out in public and see grown adults in their PJ’s on the regular.

I remember seeing someone in the checkout at Walmart wearing Marijuana Leaf pajama bottoms. It is like those teenage girls o have Taylor Swift everything, or those 30 year old bachelors who decorate the studio apartment with Cubs memorabilia. He is a do-nothing pothead, and wants the world to know it, like those dogs in the cartoons who have "bone" wallpaper.