12 September 1945
The Japanese surrender at Government House, Rangoon
people Louis Mountbatten General Aung San General Ichid Jiro Brigadier E.P.E Armstrong
On 12 September 1945, General Ichida Jiro, Acting Chief of Staff of Japan's Burma Area Army, formally surrendered to Brigadier E.F.E. Armstrong (Chief of Staff to Lieutenant-General Sir Montague Stopford, General Officer Commanding of the British Twelfth Army) at Government House, Rangoon.
On the same day, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia received the Japanese surrender in Singapore. Five days earlier on 7 September, Lord Mountbatten and General Aung San had signed an agreement at Kandy in Ceylon to absorb up to 5,200 men of Patriotic Burma Forces into the British Burma Army and form a single new "Burma Army".
A formal surrender ceremony, or handing-over of swords (pictured in the second photograph), was held the following month by Rangoon University's Convocation Hall, which can be seen in the background. On 24 October 1945, General Heitarō Kimura, commander of Japan's Burma Area Army, and his staff were escorted onto the field beside the whole, overseen by commander of the British Twelfth Army, General Montagu Stopford. Successive Japanese generals then surrendered their swords to their opposite in command. General Kimura surrendered his sword to Brigadier E.F.E. Armstrong (Brigadier General Staff, Twelfth Army) who then presented it to General Stopford. This photograph shows Lieutenant-General Shozo Sakurai, commander of the Japanese 28th Army, surrendering his sword to Brigadier J.D. Shapland (commander of the Twelfth Army's Royal Artillery). General Kimura would later be charged with war crimes, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in Tokyo but General Sakurai stayed on in a prisoner camp in Burma after the war, only willing to leave when all his men could return as well. He was repatriated to Japan a couple of years later and lived to the age of 96.