This week is the 75th anniversary of V-J Day — Victory over Japan Day. In this, my 10th and last article in this series on the end of World War II, I look at some remarkable island people who were aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay that day to witness history in the making.

The surrender ceremonies were planned 14 days in advance in the Philippines at Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters.

“While the majority of people are familiar with the formal surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945, few are aware of the pre-surrender/pre-occupation negotiations with Japan that were held in Manila on August 19-20, 1945,” Katherine Imada Wirsing told me.

Her father, Lt. Thomas Tsutomu Imada (1916-1983), and another nisei, Lt. George Kayano, were there as translators. Both had served in the Military Intelligence Service during the war.

General Torashiro Kawabe led the 16-man Japanese delegation. Kayano and Imada met them at Nichols Field outside Manila.

Though they shared a common ethnicity, the Japanese delegation “never batted an eye” when the nisei translators joined them.

The linguists translated documents, maps, reports and charts into Japanese, Wirsing says. There could be no misunderstandings in the formal surrender of Japan and future occupation of Japan.

Both Imada and Kayano were invited to witness the surrender ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri.

While the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team that were composed of Japanese Americans were warmly acknowledged after the war, the accomplishments of the MIS were not, Wirsing continues. Their work was considered classified until the 1970s.

Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, intelligence chief for MacArthur, believes that the MIS “saved over 1 million lives and shortened the war by two years.”

Perry’s Flag

Another man who attended the surrender ceremony had been 6,700 miles away just a few days earlier.

Capt. Harry Baldridge, curator at the Naval Academy Museum, suggested that Commodore Matthew Perry’s nearly 100-year-old flag would make a good addition to the surrender ceremony, Mike Weidenbach, curator/historian of the Battleship Missouri Memorial, told me.

Perry had forced Japan to open to trade and diplomatic relations with the west in 1853-54. His was the only American flag ever to fly over the Japanese Empire, Baldridge said, and it would be a fitting symbol.

The USS Missouri was to occupy the same location in Tokyo Bay as had Perry’s fleet on July 14, 1853. Over 250 American ships surrounded the Missouri this time.

The 31-star flag was carried by a 25-year-old Navy courier, Lt. John K. Bremyer, in a nonstop journey by a series of aircraft across the U.S. and the Pacific to Tokyo. It took him four grueling days.

“The flag was in a box. I carried it in a sack and slept, ate and went to the head with it, all the way out there and all the way back,” Bremyer said. “I never let it out of my custody during the whole trip.”

A USNA Museum conservator instructed that the hand-sewn flag should be displayed but not flown because of the fragility of the ancient flag’s fabric.

A white linen backing had been sewn to the front side of the flag in an effort to keep the delicate textile intact. It had to be displayed “backward,” with the stars in the upper right.

Bremyer said he got up about 6 a.m. Sunday, the morning of the ceremony. “There must have been 75 or a hundred correspondents and movie cameramen aboard, getting set for the ceremony, which was scheduled for 9 o’clock.

“They had a schedule all set up for the various dignitaries to come aboard. It really went off according to schedule, exactly as planned, right to the second.

“I had a very, very good standing place on Admiral Halsey’s flag bridge. I was two decks above the ceremony and could see everything.”

Perry’s flag was mounted in a glass frame and placed in a very prominent position to the left of MacArthur at the ceremony. It was directly opposite all the newsreel cameramen.

The Japanese stood across the table from the Allied representatives. There were about eight of them, dressed in high silk hats, cutaway coats, striped pants and high collars, or in military uniforms.

MacArthur had the Japanese sign first and then he and Adm. Chester Nimitz signed the document, followed by our allies.

Immediately after, approximately 900 fighter planes or bombers off of nearby aircraft carriers flew over in an impressive display.

Today, you can see a replica of Perry’s flag, displayed backward, on the same spot on the Surrender Deck of the Battleship Missouri. The original flag, now over 165 years old, is back at the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Md.

Webley Edwards

On Dec. 7, 1941, at radio station KGMB, Webley Edwards was the first announcer to broadcast that the attack on Pearl Harbor was, in his words, “the real McCoy. All Army, Navy and Marine personnel report to duty.”

Edwards was the man who created the famous radio program “Hawaii Calls” in 1935.

He became a war correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System and was chosen to broadcast the surrender ceremonies to the nation on Sept. 2, 1945.

At a little after 9 a.m. Toyko time, “the unmistakable sound of Webley Edwards caused radio listeners in 10s of millions of homes and offices worldwide to quiver with anticipation.”

“Attention, peoples of the world!” Edwards began. “World War II is about to come to its official closing, 3 years, 8 months and 25 days since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Lined up before us are officers and men with high- ranking stars and gold braid. The deck of the Missouri stretches out before us, its great guns pointed skyward to allow for more observers.

“So many great events had taken place before the formal surrender that some of us had come to believe that the actual ceremony would be something of an anti-climax,” Edwards said. “But it turned out to be a thrilling experience I shall never forget.”

Edwards described the air of expectancy aboard the Missouri on that dreary, foggy morning, with the Navy men all in white and “such a collection” of generals and admirals that the one-star boys were running errands.”

There was very little ostentation and traditional fanfare, the correspondent said.

MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, wanted officers to wear their daily service clothes — khaki button-up shirts with open collars and no ties. “We fought them in our khaki uniforms, and we’ll accept their surrender in our khaki uniforms,” MacArthur was reported to have said.

Edwards concluded the historic broadcast from Tokyo with these words — “And so now we have peace in the world. From the Pacific, ladies and gentlemen, as if God Himself approves, the clouds have broken away, and the sun has come out in these first moments of peace.”

Have a question or suggestion? Contact Bob Sigall, author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books at Sigall@Yahoo.com.