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thedrifter
09-03-09, 08:07 AM
WWII vets mark Japan surrender aboard ship
By Audrey McAvoy - The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Sep 2, 2009 22:03:19 EDT

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii — The famous battleship where Japanese officials signed the surrender documents that officially ended World War II played host on Wednesday to about 20 aging U.S. veterans and dozens of government officials as they marked the 64th anniversary of the war's end.

The Missouri, which was anchored in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, for the surrender ceremonies, has since been decommissioned and moored in Pearl Harbor.

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie told those gathered it's fitting that the battleship — now known as the Battleship Missouri Memorial — is docked just a few hundred yards from the memorial for the Arizona.

The Arizona sank when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, an event that drew the U.S. into the war.

"I can think of nothing more valuable of this complex here ... to enable generations to come to reflect and understand," said Abercrombie, D-Hawaii.

The memorial welcomes more than 40,000 tourists each month to exhibits that highlight the Missouri's role in Japan's surrender.

Walter Lassen, a 27-year-old first gunner's mate aboard the Missouri when the war ended, said his fellow sailors had "little love of the enemy" when Japanese officials came aboard to sign the documents.

The Missouri, one of the most powerful U.S. warships at the time, fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa as American forces neared the Japanese main islands.

For months, sailors focused on aggressively protecting their ship and other ships in the U.S. fleet. At one point, the Missouri came under the attack of 95 Japanese planes, Lassen said.

A kamikaze pilot slammed into the Missouri's hull in April 1945, though the plane's bomb failed to detonate and only the pilot was killed.

"The mood at the time of the ceremony was the culmination of all this amount of fighting we had been doing and all this shooting that had been going on," said Lassen, 91.

But with the surrender, sailors began to feel that their country was finally safe, he said.

Pearl Harbor survivor Delton E. Walling, 88, thought back to the U.S. servicemen who lost their lives in the conflict.

"They're the ones that are on my mind today — those boys that are in the Pacific," Walling said after the ceremony. "They're the ones that made your lifestyle the way it is today. They gave their life."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Wallace Gregson spoke Wednesday of how much has changed in 64 years.

"While there have been other wars since 1945, the scale and the scope of those conflicts has faded as the Asia-Pacific region has become a model of peace, stability and cooperation," Gregson said.

Ellie