Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender in a radio broadcast, the first time most citizens had ever heard their emperor's voice. Crowds filled Times Square and streets worldwide in spontaneous celebration, immortalized by Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse. The formal surrender document would be signed aboard the USS Missouri on September 2.
Emperor Hirohito's recorded message, broadcast to a stunned nation, used the deliberately oblique language of the Japanese court: the war situation had 'developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage.' Most Japanese citizens had never heard their emperor speak before; many strained to parse the archaic, formal Japanese and only gradually understood the war was over. Some military officers attempted a coup to prevent the broadcast from airing at all, storming the Imperial Household Ministry hours earlier in a failed rebellion.
In New York, news of the surrender reached crowds by mid-afternoon, and Times Square erupted into one of the largest spontaneous celebrations in American history. LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured a sailor bending a nurse backward for a kiss amid the chaos, a photograph that would become one of the most reproduced images of the 20th century. In Australia and Britain, the date is still commemorated as VP Day or VJ Day, marking the true end of a war that had killed an estimated 70 to 85 million people worldwide.