Japan Surrenders
At 7 p.m. on August 15, 1945, reporters gathered in the Oval Office to hear President Harry S. Truman announce the unconditional surrender of Japan. Shaken by the atomic destruction wreaked on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and faced with the daunting prospect of Allied invasion, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito met with his ministers on the morning of August 14 and announced, ‘We cannot continue the war any longer.’ World War II was over.