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MacArthur's Speeches: Surrender ceremony on the U.S.S. Missouri
Even his detractors -- and the defeated Japanese -- recognized the grace with
which MacArthur presided over the surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S.
Missouri. A few minutes after the Japanese and other delegations were in
place, MacArthur, entering with Nimitz and Halsey, strode to the microphone and
uttered the following words:
We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to
conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues,
involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the
battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor
is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of
the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us,
both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits
the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our people
unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understanding they are here
formally to assume.
It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this
solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the
past -- a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most
cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.
After the surrender documents were signed and the Japanese delegation had
departed, MacArthur went to another microphone and broadcast the following
radio message to the world. Once again, note the ease with which the soldier
made the transition to statesman:
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has
been won....
As I look back upon the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan
and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the
defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank
a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from
which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the
exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning
back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.
A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it
profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of
civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive
advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises
the traditional concepts of war.
Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.... Military alliances,
balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only
path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we
do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at
our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual
recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our
almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and
cultural development of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit
if we are to save the flesh.
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