"The ceremony aboard the deck of the Missouri lasted twenty three minutes and was broadcast throughout the world. The instrument was first signed by the Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu "By Command and on behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Government" (9:04 am). General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, then signed the document "By Command and on behalf of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters" signed (9:06 am).

At 9:08 a.m., U.S. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the Commander in the Southwest Pacific and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, accepted the surrender on behalf of the Allied Powers and signed in his capacity as Supreme Commander."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Instrument_of_Surrender



Foreign Minister Shigemitsu signs the surrender document.





General MacArthur signs the document.





Airplane formations overfly the USS Missouri





The Instrument of Surrender

Cool.


I got to visit the Missouri last fall.  Awesome experience

Thanks. We flew a lot of planes over Japan that day! I can't seen to find it anymore, but a B-29 wing commander wrote in 1994 about that day.

My teacher was there.  He said those airplanes didn't fly in neat formations over the fleet. He said the planes went looky-loo and cruised over Japan to see what the effects of their bombing. They then headed independently over Tokyo Bay and it looked more like an airborne circus than an orderly and awesome display of Allied airpower. He said that those pictures of planes over the fleet were taken the day after when the airplanes were ordered to do it right this time.

In doing a bit of preliminary research, I found references to performing defensive patrols to defend the fleet, and also missions to locate and drop supplies to Allied POW camps.  Certainly, the tight formations look good in pictures, but I think would not be effective for stopping any die-hard kamikazes.  Certainly one in the wrong place at the wrong time hitting the Missouri would have left a lot of promotion opportunity in the upper US flag ranks.

From p 453,

"Meanwhile, Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet, including the British warships, steamed into Japan's coastal waters and anchored in Sagami Bay on the 27th. Japanese naval officers met the incoming fleet units to receive instructions for the safe entry of the Allied Fleet into Tokyo Bay in accordance with General MacArthur's surrender directives. On 29 August, the Third Fleet moved forward into Tokyo Bay to prepare for the landings at Yokosuka.

As the 11th Airborne poured into Atsugi Airfield, troops of the 4th Marine Regimental Combat Team, 6th Marine Division, went ashore at Yokosuka Naval Base on the west bank of Tokyo Bay below Yokohama. Immediately after the airborne landing, elements of the 188th Parachute Glider Regiment sped to Yokohama to take control of the huge dock area. Other patrols of the airborne unit fanned out to the south, and contacted troops of the 4th Marines, whose landing was also completed without incident. The Marine Regiment passed to the control of the Commanding General, Eighth Army immediately after it disembarked.64

The intensive preparation and excitement that attended these first landings on the Japanese mainland did not interfere with the mission of affording relief and rescue to the unfortunate Allied personnel already inside Japan as internees or prisoners. Despite the bad weather that delayed the occupation operation, units of the Far East Air Forces and planes from the Third Fleet continued their surveillance missions. On 25 August they began dropping relief supplies of food, medicine, and clothing to Allied soldiers and civilians in prisoner-of-war and internment camps throughout the main islands."


P. 454:

"Japan's formal capitulation to the Allies climaxed a week of historic events as the initial steps of the occupation program went into effect. The surrender ceremony took place aboard the Third Fleet flagship, U. S. S. Missouri, on the misty morning of Sunday, 2 September 1945. As the Missouri lay majestically at anchor in the calm waters of Tokyo Bay, convoys of large and small vessels formed a tight cordon around the surrender ship, while army and navy planes maintained a protective vigil overhead. This was the objective toward which the Allies had long been striving-the unconditional surrender of the previously undefeated military forces of Japan and the final end to conflict in World War II."

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch14.htm


From the USS Lexington history website:

"For operations on the 29th and 30th of August, Task Group 38.1 relieved Task Group 38.4 in the Tokyo area. The Lexington was given responsibility for an area which included the city of Tokyo and the waters of Tokyo Bay. Lexington planes were flown overhead as General MacArthur landed on Atsugi airfield and as the first of our occupation forces made their way ashore in the vicinity of Yokosuka. On both days more supplies were dropped to prisoners.

Patrols and prisoners-of-war supply-dropping missions were flown on the first three days of September, the Lexington's area of responsibility now including the city of Nagoya and airfields to the southeast of that city. As had been the case in the other areas over which Air Group 94 planes had flown since the end of hostilities, Kapanese planes were exposed in orderly lines at all airfields, no enemy planes were in the air and no evidence was seen of any hostile action.

On the 4th of September the Lexington was detached, and on the afternoon of the 5th set a precedent for heavy carriers by entering Tokyo Bay. The crew was drawn upon her flight deck at quarters for muster as she left Sagami Wan, rounded Kannon Saki Light, passed to port the towering cranes of Yokosuka Naval Base and the clutter pagoda bridge of the still floating Nagato, and to starboard the more familiar battleships and cruisers of the Third Fleet, till, off the waterfront of Yokohama, she dropped anchor. This halted the restless movement which had never ceased since she quit Leyte Gulf 67 days eailier, and brought to a satisfying conclusion the fighting history begun off the beaches of Tarawa two years before."

http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/usslexington/history4.html

Thanks.  My instructor was in a B-29.