Hawaii-based service members, veterans, government leaders and civilians attended a ceremony of the 69th anniversary of the end of World War II aboard the Battleship Missouri Memorial Sept. 2.
Now moored on Ford Island, the location where Sailors first witnessed the attack that brought America to war, USS Missouri, serves as a monument and a reminder for the beginning and the end of the WWII for the United States.
On Sept. 2, 1945, Japan officially surrendered as the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on the wooden decks of the ‘Mighty Mo.’ Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and other world leaders oversaw that historic moment that is remembered today.