Events before V-J Day Within three months of the
end of the war in Europe on May 9 (Moscow time), the USSR would join the Allied fight against Japan, as agreed upon at the
Yalta Conference in February 1945. On August 8 (Moscow time), the
Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and attacked Japanese forces not only in Manchuria on mainland Asia, but also on the Kuril islands and Sakhalin, threatening to
attack and occupy Hokkaido. Already on 6 August, and again on 9 August 1945, the United States dropped
atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with a "
Third Shot" not possible before August 19. The Japanese government on August 10 communicated its intention to surrender under the terms of the
Potsdam Declaration, but that was not yet the end of hostilities. The news of the Japanese offer began early celebrations around the world. Allied soldiers in
London danced in a
conga line on
Regent Street. Americans and Frenchmen in
Paris paraded on the
Champs-Élysées singing "
Don't Fence Me In". American soldiers in
occupied Berlin shouted "It's over in the Pacific", and hoped that they would now not be transferred there to fight the Japanese. Germans stated that the Japanese were wise enough—unlike themselves—to give up in a hopeless situation, and were grateful that the atomic bomb was not ready in time to be used against them.
Moscow newspapers briefly reported on the atomic bombings with no commentary of any kind. While "Russians and foreigners alike could hardly talk about anything else", the Soviet government refused to make any statements on the bombs' implication for politics or science. In
Chongqing, Chinese fired firecrackers and "almost buried Americans in gratitude". In
Manila, residents sang "
God Bless America". On
Okinawa, six men were killed and dozens were wounded as American soldiers "took every weapon within reach and started firing into the sky" to celebrate; ships sounded
general quarters and fired
anti-aircraft guns as their crews believed that a
kamikaze attack was occurring. On
Tinian island,
B-29 crews preparing for their next mission over Japan were told that it was cancelled, but that they could not celebrate because it might be rescheduled for a "
Third Shot".
Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration A little after noon
Japan Standard Time on 15 August 1945,
Emperor Hirohito's
announcement of Japan's acceptance of the terms of the
Potsdam Declaration was broadcast to the Japanese people over the radio. Earlier the same day, the Japanese government had broadcast an announcement over
Radio Tokyo that "acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation [would be] coming soon", and had advised the Allies of the surrender by sending a cable to U.S. President
Harry S Truman via the
Swiss diplomatic mission in
Washington, D.C. A nationwide broadcast by Truman was aired at seven o'clock p.m. (
daylight time in
Washington, D.C.) on Tuesday, 14 August, announcing the communication and that the formal event was scheduled for September 2. In his announcement of Japan's surrender on 14 August, Truman said that "the proclamation of V-J Day must wait upon
the formal signing of the surrender terms by Japan". Since the European
Axis powers had surrendered three months earlier (
V-E Day), V-J Day was the effective end of
World War II, although a peace treaty between Japan and most of the Allies was not signed until 1952, and between Japan and the Soviet Union until 1956. In
Australia, the name
V-P Day (Victory in the Pacific) was used from the outset. The
Canberra Times of 14 August 1945, refers to V-P Day celebrations, and a
public holiday for V-P Day was gazetted by the government in that year according to the
Australian War Memorial. In
San Francisco two nude women jumped into a pond at the
Civic Center to soldiers' cheers. More seriously, thousands of drunken people, the vast majority of them Navy enlistees who had not served in the war theatre, embarked in what the
San Francisco Chronicle summarized in 2015 as "a three-night orgy of vandalism, looting, assault, robbery, rape and murder" and "the deadliest riots in the city's history", with more than 1,000 people injured, 13 killed, and at least six women raped. None of these acts resulted in serious criminal charges, and no civilian or military official was sanctioned, leading the
Chronicle to conclude that "the city simply tried to pretend the riots never happened". The largest crowd in the history of
New York City's
Times Square gathered to celebrate. The victory itself was announced by a headline on the "zipper"
news ticker at
One Times Square, which read "OFFICIAL *** TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER ***"; the six asterisks represented the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. In the
Garment District, workers threw out cloth scraps and ticker tape, leaving a pile five inches deep on the streets. The news of the war's end sparked a "coast-to-coast frenzy of [servicemen] kissing . . . everyone in skirts that happened along," with
Life publishing photographs of such kisses in Washington,
Kansas City,
Los Angeles, and
Miami. US-Soviet sailors on VJ Day.jpg|US and Soviet sailors and seamen celebrating V-J Day on August 14, 1945 V-J Day Times Square NYWTS.jpg|Crowds celebrating V-J Day in
Times Square on August 14, 1945 War Ends.jpg|Citizens and workers of
Oak Ridge, Tennessee celebrate V-J Day on August 14, 1945 American military personnel gather in Paris to celebrate the Japanese surrender.jpg|Allied military personnel in
Paris celebrating V-J Day on August 15, 1945 ShanghaiCelebratingJapaneseSurrender.jpg|Crowds in
Shanghai celebrating V-J Day on August 15, 1945 3 September 1945 - Chungking Victory Parade.jpg|Chinese victory parade in
Chongqing on September 3, 1945 1945-Dancing-Man.jpg|
Dancing Man in
Sydney on August 15, 1945 Parade in Montreal's Chinatown.jpg|
Montreal's Chinese community celebrates V-J Day with a parade in
Chinatown on September 2, 1945 Civilians and service personnel in London's Picadilly Circus celebrate the news of Allied Victory over Japan in August 1945. D25636.jpg|Civilians and service personnel in
London celebrating V-J Day on August 15, 1945
Famous photographs 's photo published in
The New York Times One of the best-known kisses that day appeared in
V-J Day in Times Square, one of the most famous photographs ever published by
Life. It was shot on August 14, 1945, shortly before the announcement by President Truman occurred and when people were beginning to gather in celebration.
Alfred Eisenstaedt went to Times Square to take candid photographs and spotted a sailor who "grabbed something in white. And I stood there, and they kissed. And I snapped four times." The same moment was captured in a very similar photograph by Navy photographer
Victor Jorgensen (right), published in
the New York Times. Several people have since claimed to be the sailor or the female, who was long assumed to be a nurse. It has since been established that the woman in the Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph was actually a dental assistant named
Greta Zimmer Friedman, who clarified in a later interview that "I was grabbed by a sailor and it wasn't that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn't have to go back, I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded." Another famous image is that of the
Dancing Man in
Elizabeth Street, Sydney, captured by a press photographer and a
Movietone newsreel. The film and stills from it have taken on iconic status in Australian history and culture as a symbol of victory in the war.
Japanese reaction On August 15 and 16, some Japanese soldiers, devastated by the surrender, committed
suicide. Well over 100 American
prisoners of war were also murdered. In addition, many Australian and British prisoners of war were murdered in
Borneo, at both
Ranau and Sandakan, by the Imperial Japanese Army. At
Batu Lintang camp, also in Borneo,
death orders were found which proposed the murder of some 2,000 POWs and civilian internees on September 15, 1945, but the camp was liberated four days before these orders were due to be carried out. Japanese forces remained
in combat with Soviet forces on several fronts for two weeks following V-J Day.
Ceremony aboard USS Missouri The formal signing of the
Japanese Instrument of Surrender took place on board the
battleship in
Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, and at that time Truman declared September 2 to be the official V-J Day. ==Chronology==