The end of the Second World War came with the announcement made by Emperor Hirohito of Japan on 15 August 1945, it would take a few weeks for Japan’s formal surrender – first on 2 September 1945 on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay and in Southeast Asia at the Municipal Chamber of Singapore’s Municipal Building (City Hall and now the City Hall Wing of the National Gallery Singapore) on 12 September 1945.

A wonderful set of photographs of the surrender in Singapore – plus a couple from the arrival of a delegation of Japanese senior officers to discuss the surrender in August 1945 in Mingaladon Airfield in Rangoon, popped up on On a Little Street in Singapore. The photographs, which were posted by Ian Hepplewhite and were part of his father’s collection, are shared here with his kind permission.

Formal Surrender of Japan in Southeast Asia, 12 September 1945

(Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command, received the formal surrender of the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia from General Seishirō Itagaki on behalf of Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, the Supreme Commander of Southern Command of the Japanese Imperial Army)

“This is the series of pictures I have of my father’s showing the Japanese surrender to Mountbatten. I do have other images of Singapore from that time people may have already seen” – Ian Hepplewhite, on On a Little Street in Singapore.

Mingaladon Airfield, August 1945