Our final port of call in the Hawaiian Islands on this journey was in Honolulu, the largest city in the state (population over 1 million people), on the central island of O’ahu, for a couple of days (before sailing for 8 days to cross the Pacific Ocean to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico). [For background on the city of Honolulu, please see our blog from December 3, 2024: https://richedwardsimagery.wordpress.com/2024/12/03/honolulu-oahu-hawaii-united-states-of-america/
On this visit we enjoyed two separate historical tours at Pearl Harbor, the site of the surprise military attack by the Japanese Imperial Empire (by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service) on the American Naval base and shipyard at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii. [See the historical notes at the end of this blog post on the history of the attack, titled, “December 7, 1941: “The Date Which Will Live in Infamy’” – United States of America President Franklin Delano Roosevelt”.]
This blog post highlights our visit to the USS Battleship Missouri Memorial on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. Note that the Battleship Missouri(the third U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the “show me” state) was neither built by, nor at the Pearl Harbor Naval base during attack in 1941. Most visitors to Pearl Harbor do visit the memorial to the USS Battleship Arizona, which was sunk in the attack, with over 1,100 of her crew killed, and most of them interred in the wreckage at the bottom of the harbor, under the USS Arizona Memorial erected over her sunken hull.
This Battleship USS Missouri did not get commissioned at the United States Brooklyn Navy Yard (in New York City, NY) until June 11, 1944, although she was christened by U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s wife, Margaret Truman, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on January 29, 1944. Following a summer shakedown cruise, by November 1941 she was in route to the Pacific Ocean, where she initially moored at the Pearl Harbor Navy Base on December 24, 1944.
The ship was very active in the naval war against Japan throughout 1945 (in the Pacific), until her most famous moment in history, the signing of the formal “Instrument of Surrender” [see the photographs of a facsimile of the document, below], acknowledging the Allied defeat of the Japanese Imperial Empire – signed on September 2, 1945, on the main deck of the Battleship USS Missouri.
The solemnity of the memorials at Pearl Harbor was captured during the war by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, United States Navy [on a plaque under the Nimitz statue in the photograph, above, on the way to boarding the Battleship Missouri]: “They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we have a solemn obligation – the obligation to insure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live.”
The Surrender Ceremony
“On the teak decks of USS Missouri, WWII finally came to an end on 2 September 1945. The Surrender Ceremony, which formally brought an end to the bloodiest conflict in human history, lasted a mere 23 minutes. It began at 0902 with a brief opening speech by General Douglas MacArthur. In his speech, the General called for justice, tolerance, and rebuilding. After MacArthur’s speech, Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, representing the Emperor of Japan, signed the Instrument of Surrender. He was followed by the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Yoshijirō Umezu, who signed for the Japanese Army. After this, General MacArthur signed the Instrument of Surrender as the Supreme Allied Commander with 6 pens. Of these pens, he gave two to former POWs Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright and Lt. General Arthur E. Percival. Following MacArthur, other allied representatives followed in this order:
- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States
- General Xu Yongchang for the Republic of China
- Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom
- Lt. General Kuzma Derevyanko for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
- General Sir Thomas A. Blamey for the Commonwealth of Australia
- Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave for the Dominion of Canada
- General Philippe Le Clerc for the Provisional Government of the French Republic
- Lt. Admiral Conrad E. L. Helfrich for the Kingdom of the Netherlands
- Air Vice Marshal Leonard M. Isitt for the Dominion of New Zealand
“After the signing concluded, General MacArthur made a few concluding remarks and closed the proceedings. At 0923 on 2 September 1945, the war was officially over.” — https://ussmissouri.org/learn-the-history/surrender
December 7, 1941: “The Date Which Will Live in Infamy” – United States of America President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“On November 26, 1941… the Japanese Imperial Navy ordered an armada that included 414 planes aboard six aircraft carriers to set to sea. Following a plan devised by Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who had earlier studied at Harvard and served as Japan’s naval attaché in Washington, DC, the flotilla aimed to destroy the US Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor.
“To catch the Americans by surprise, the ships maintained strict radio silence throughout their 3,500- mile trek from Hitokappu Bay to a predetermined launch sector 230 miles north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. At 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, a first wave of Japanese planes lifted off from the carriers, followed by a second wave an hour later. Led by Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilots spotted land and assumed their attack positions around 7:30 a.m. Twenty-three minutes later, with his bomber perched above the unsuspecting American ships moored in pairs along Pearl Harbor’s “Battleship Row,” Fuchida broke radio silence to shout, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!) — the coded message informing the Japanese fleet that they had caught the Americans by surprise.
“For nearly two hours, Japanese firepower rained down upon American ships and servicemen. While the attack inflicted significant destruction, the fact that Japan failed to destroy American repair shops and fuel-oil tanks mitigated the damage. Even more significantly, no American aircraft carriers were at Pearl Harbor that day. The Japanese, however, immediately followed their Pearl Harbor assault with attacks against US and British bases in the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, Wake Island, Malaya, and Hong Kong. Within days, the Japanese were masters of the Pacific.
“In Washington, a decrypted message had alerted officials that an attack was imminent moments before Fuchida’s planes took to the skies. But a communications delay prevented a warning from reaching Pearl Harbor in time. The Americans missed another opportunity when an officer discounted a report from an Oahu-based radar operator that a large number of planes were headed their way.
“At the White House, Roosevelt learned of the attack as he was finishing lunch and preparing to tend to his stamp collection. He spent the remainder of the afternoon receiving updates and writing the address he intended to deliver to Congress the following day asking for a declaration of war against Japan. As he drafted and redrafted the speech, Roosevelt focused on rallying the nation behind a war many had hoped to avoid.” — www.nationalww2museum.org
The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation, declaring the “American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” The U.S. entered World War II within hours.
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