Victory over Japan Day 2027 is on Thursday

About Victory over Japan Day

The war against Japan went on for three months after Germany surrendered in May 1945. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria the same day, Emperor Hirohito told his cabinet he supported accepting the Allied terms of the Potsdam Declaration. A recording of his announcement was broadcast on Japanese radio at noon Tokyo time on August 15. Because of the time difference, the news reached Washington on the evening of August 14, when President Harry Truman announced it and crowds poured into Times Square and other city streets.

Truman said that V-J Day itself would have to wait for Japan to sign the surrender terms. The formal ceremony took place on September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, where the Japanese delegation signed before General Douglas MacArthur. In a radio address on the evening of September 1, Washington time, Truman proclaimed September 2 as V-J Day, the day of formal surrender. The United States still marks that date with ceremonies for veterans of the Pacific war.

Other countries chose the date of the announcement. The United Kingdom declared August 15, 1945, as VJ Day and still commemorates it then; in 2025 the government held a national two-minute silence at noon on August 15 for the 80th anniversary. Australia calls August 15 Victory in the Pacific Day, and Japan marks August 15 as the end of the war. In the US, Rhode Island keeps a related state holiday, Victory Day, on the second Monday of August.

As the National WWII Museum points out, the legal end of hostilities came later still: Truman proclaimed the period of hostilities over on December 31, 1946.

Sources: The National WWII Museum: What (and When) Is V-J Day?, GOV.UK: National two-minute silence to mark VJ Day 80 (2025), Rhode Island General Laws 25-1-1.3: Victory Day. How we check dates.

How to mark Victory over Japan Day

• Attend a V-J Day ceremony at a veterans' memorial, a military museum or, in Hawaii, the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
• Listen to Truman's September 1, 1945, radio address or read the text of the Instrument of Surrender with students or family.
• Ask older relatives what they know about family members who served in the Pacific or were held as prisoners of war, and record their stories.
• Visit a war cemetery or memorial and read the names of those who served in Asia and the Pacific.
• Read about the war's toll on civilians across Asia, including in China, the Philippines and Japan, to get a fuller picture of what the surrender ended.

Victory over Japan Day dates