The Instrument of Surrender

 

We like to say that we’ve visited historic places. Families still take pictures in front Rome’s Coliseum, albeit making Facebook their photo album. Civil War buffs take the hour-long trek across the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where one marvels at both the abject destruction of life and the fact that anyone could survive. Dealey Plaza in Dallas is now less a roadway than death’s arrow marker or point of infinitesimal conspiracy, take your pick. There are thousands more locations across the planet where the course of history changed; some mark major events, many more just points of human progression. Few, however, mark a spot where both the world changed and such an event will never happen again. Such a spot exists, and I have been there. 75 years ago today, over the course of four minutes, that spot closed the door on one horrific chapter of human history and opened up the possibility to the end of humanity.

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. It’s the poor stepchild in WWII history—the bombing of Pearl Harbor, invasion of Normandy, and destruction of Hiroshima are commemorated annually by world leaders and the press. V-E and V-J days benefit from well-photographed celebrations in Times Square—who can’t like the exuberant images of chaos, confetti, and kissing. The contrast is even starker when you see the small plaque embedded in the deck of USS MISSOURI (in all-caps as a tip to my Navy friends), its few words marking the place where representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the instrument of surrender. And in the four minutes it took enemy and Allied representatives to exchange signatures, the last of all world wars, as we know them, ended.

Of course war didn’t go away, as USS MISSOURI and her fellow ships were soon part of hot proxy battles in the Cold War. These were real fights where real men and women, uniformed and civilian, fought and died, losing limbs and loved ones. It was, unfortunately, much of the same, just on a smaller scale.

But a world war as we know it is a thing of the past. WWII was really the only time in history where every country and every person on the planet was somehow involved. Governments needed to choose Axis or Allies and bear arms in support. Every man and woman was either fighting or somehow supporting the fight. The most distant hideaways were still under the watchful eyes of both sides, either or both ready to pounce on any traveler.

And while the conflagration took the greatest number of lives ever seen, we still recognize it as warfare we understand. Battlefields are preserved with stray armaments left strategically for tourists. Monuments in towns large and small stand to commemorate the dead, sometimes listing the fallen by name. Looking out from the bow of USS MISSOURI, where she is now moored in Pearl Harbor, and not even a long par-4 play away lies USS ARIZONA in her watery grave. Above her the famous white monument hovering just above the Hawaiian waters with each name of the dead sailors and marines carved into a marble wall. Such commemorations have been that way since the beginning of the US republic and for much of the rest of the world from the time of the written word.

Another world war will get no such remembrance. Another world war, where every nation chooses a side, when they put all of their military industry into combat, would look nothing like the usual run up of troops getting to the front. For the next world war would be nuclear aerial assault, with an initial wave of missiles taking an hour or so to start the conflict and whatever bombers that are left still flying following soon after to mop up what hadn’t been destroyed. Few would be remembered as there would be little left. Hundreds of millions of bodies would instantly evaporate; some might be far enough away from the blast zones to leave a shadow of their burned remains on the pavement where they stood. The battlefields would be where survivors remain; no memorials to the dead with record books gone and computers destroyed.

I offer neither disarmament nor first strike as solutions to our problems. But today would be a good time for all to reflect about what transpired during those few minutes in Tokyo Bay 75 years ago. Since that ink dried mankind has not tamed its bad natures. But maybe in a prayer for peace we can resolve never let our world get to that point of no return. Success would mean that those many veterans buried in our cemeteries did not die in vain.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.