The Deck of the Missouri

Every man on USS Missouri who could get a view found one. On the morning of 2 September 1945 the crew climbed onto the turrets, the gun barrels, the superstructure and the boat cranes, in dress whites, to watch the war end below them on the starboard veranda deck.

The signing table was a mess table from the crew's galley with a green baize cloth over it. Eleven Japanese delegates stood on one side. General MacArthur signed as Supreme Commander, Admiral Nimitz for the United States, then representatives of China, Britain, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

The whole thing took twenty-three minutes. A brass plaque still marks the spot on the deck.

The painting looks up. The battleship's superstructure stacks tier on tier above the deck, and every tier is lined with sailors in white, hundreds of them, packed shoulder to shoulder out along the sixteen-inch barrels. The ceremony itself is small and low in the frame — a green table, a few dark suits, a line of khaki. A shaft of light comes down through the overcast on the right and picks out Fuji across the bay.