This podcast is a recording of a presentation shared by a docent aboard the USS Missouri battleship, now docked at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 5, 2007. It was on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Harbor aboard the USS Missouri that generals representing the Empire of Japan surrendered to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and other officials representing the United States of America. The USS Missouri is now docked right next to the location where the USS Oklahoma was docked on December 7, 1941, when it was attacked by the Japanese Navy and sunk after sustaining nine torpedo hits. Two days after this presentation was recorded, a memorial to the men who died aboard the USS Oklahoma was dedicated in Pearl Harbor, only five hundred feet away from where the Missouri is now docked. This presentation and retelling of the surrender of the Japanese to the Americans aboard the USS Missouri was shared especially for junior ROTC students from Claremore, Oklahoma, who had spent the previous night aboard the USS Missouri and were concluding their tour of the battleship. These junior ROTC students served as part of the color guard participating the dedication ceremony of the USS Oklahoma Memorial two days later. It was a moving and powerful experience to stand on the deck of the USS Missouri, in the exact location where the Japanese surrender to the United States had been signed sixty-two years before in Tokoyo Harbor, and look out onto the placid waters of Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial. Let us pray the nations and people of our planet never again experience a world war as terrible and costly as World War II. The courage, fortitude, and sacrifices of the men and women who fought and struggled to bring that conflict to an end should never be forgotten.


Show Notes:

  1. Oklahoma World War II Stories Project Wiki
  2. Flickr Set from December 2007: The USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor
  3. Battleship Missouri Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
  4. WikiPedia article on General Douglas MacArthur
  5. WikiPedia article on the USS Missouri (BB-63)


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Made with Love in Oklahoma City