For 17 years World War II veteran Art Albert, who served aboard the USS Missouri, has never missed a ceremony to commemorate the end of the war, held every year on the battleship since it became a museum at Pearl Harbor in 1999.

“This is my home,” said Albert 89, who flew to Hawaii from Hindenburg, Miss., to attend the 71st anniversary Friday of the war’s end and pay homage to America’s “greatest generation” who fought and sacrificed their lives.

Albert was among approximately 150 people who attended the ceremony aboard the “Mighty Mo” that included fellow veterans, lawmakers and dignitaries.

Michael Carr, president and chief executive officer of the USS Missouri Memorial Association, said, “We’re here together to remember and reflect a significant day in our nation’s history. Today, when the fighting stopped, the guns became silent, and a newfound friendship began between two countries that were once enemies.”

On Sept. 2, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted a surrender document from Japan on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, formally ending the war.

Before Friday’s ceremony began, Albert recalled the elation he and his fellow crew members felt when MacArthur officially announced the end of the war. “We all screamed and hollered,” he said.

Albert, then 18, was a seaman aboard the Missouri when a Japanese kamikaze plane struck the side of the battleship during the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. Upon impact Albert’s knees struck a ladder, causing injuries that required multiple surgeries.

During the ceremony Rear Adm. Frederick “Fritz” Roegge, commander of the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force, spoke of how Pearl Harbor serves as a visceral reminder of WWII: the start of the war sparked by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the end with the signing of surrender documents aboard the Missouri.

Roegge said the U.S. and Japan are now close friends and allies that defend each other and “promote freedom and democracy throughout the Pacific.”

Japanese Consul General Yasushi Misawa attended the ceremony with his wife, Yoko, to remember the historic day. Japan and the U.S. now maintain a close partnership, Misawa said.

The Missouri was decommissioned in February 1955, then returned to active duty in 1986 before it was decommissioned for the final time in 1992.

After six years at the Navy’s Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Washington state, the vessel was towed to Hawaii in 1998 after it was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the battleship.

The 997-foot ship is berthed within 300 yards of the USS Arizona, which sank during the Japanese attack in December 1941.

Former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, the keynote speaker, spoke about the devastation and injustices during the war.

Her grandfathers, both founders of the Waianae Hongwanji Mission, were confined at internment camps — one in Honouliuli in Kunia and the other in New Mexico — during the war.

“Peace is still and will always be the ultimate form of diplomacy,” Hanabusa said. “We as a country must also recognize that with our allies we will maintain that peace.”