When the Japanese delegation came aboard the ship to sign the terms of surrender on 2 September 1945, few if any of the Sailors and Allied dignitaries on deck realized how the site was selected. Here's what happened.
Some events in history are the result of careful planning, while others just sort of evolve through a series of steps that did not appear at first to be connected. The latter was the case with the selection of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) to serve as the site of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay 65 years ago.
