USS Missouri
USS Missouri is a site in Honolulu, Hawaii. The deck where the war ended—September 2, 1945. HauntHunt files it with World War II, maritime history and local folklore. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.
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Is USS Missouri haunted?
The record holds 1 claim — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed anecdotal. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
The USS Missouri is the ship where the war ended — the last battleship America built, christened by Margaret Truman in January 1944, sent into the Pacific for the war's final year. She fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa; on April 11, 1945, a kamikaze hit her starboard side and Captain Callaghan ordered the dead pilot given a military burial at sea — a gesture the Japanese pilot's family would learn of decades later. The dent is still in the hull.
On September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, the Missouri's veranda deck became the most photographed few square feet on earth: General MacArthur presided, the Japanese delegation signed, and World War II officially ended. The ship went on to Korea, to a Brooklyn grounding, to a 1984 recommissioning under Reagan, and to the Gulf War — where she fired her sixteen-inch guns in anger one last time.
She came home to Pearl Harbor in 1998 to stand guard over the Arizona — the war's beginning and end moored a few hundred yards apart, the ship where the first Americans died facing the ship where the peace was signed. The file keeps the Mighty Mo: the kamikaze burial, the surrender deck, and the battleship that bookends the war.
USS Missouri is the archive's surrender file — the Brooklyn-built battleship, the September 2 ceremony, and the berth across from the Arizona.
Why this file matters
The Missouri is the archive's surrender file — the last battleship, the Tokyo Bay signing, and the memorial moored across from the Arizona.
A ship that ends a war keeps its deck — the file's suggestion being that the Missouri's hold is the pairing: the beginning at the Arizona's berth, the end on the surrender deck, and both still afloat in the same harbor.
Four ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Missouri in honor of the state or river of Missouri: USS Missouri (1841), a sidewheel frigate launched in 1841 and destroyed by fire in August 1843 USS Missouri (BB-11), a Maine-class battleship in service from 1900 to 1922. USS Missouri (BB-63), an Iowa-class battleship in service (variably) from 1944 to 1992; site of the official Japanese surrender of World War II; now a floating war memorial at Naval Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii USS Missouri (SSN-780), a Virginia-class submarine commissioned in 2010
USS MissouriThe record of claims
Reported figures on the ship. USS Missouri's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. Witness accounts, no evidence file: the claim is anecdotal and stays that way. 'USS Missouri' carries the account. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.
Documented history
The September 2, 1945 surrender is documented. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'USS Missouri' carry the record. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from. It remains the site's standing claim.
Verified historyWikipedia
Sources on file
- 01USS MissouriWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
HI batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.