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Texan signs peace treaty with Japan
On this day in 1945, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed the treaty
with Japan that ended World War II. Nimitz, born in 1885, was the
descendant of German pioneer settlers of Fredericksburg. He was named
commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet shortly after Japan's 1941
attack on Pearl Harbor, and later commander in chief of Pacific Ocean
Areas as well. With authority over the entire Pacific theater except for
Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Southwest Pacific sector and the inactive
southeast, Nimitz coordinated the offensive that brought the Japanese to
unconditional surrender. He signed the peace treaty aboard the
battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Nimitz later spent two years as
commander in chief of the United States Fleet, and also served as a
roving ambassador for the United Nations and chairman of the
Presidential Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights. He
died in 1966. In 1964 a local citizens' group established the Fleet
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Memorial Naval Museum in the old Nimitz Hotel
in Fredericksburg. The project evolved into the National Museum of the
Pacific War.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- NIMITZ, CHESTER WILLIAM
- WORLD WAR II, TEXANS IN
- NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE PACIFIC WAR
- FREDERICKSBURG, TX
- GERMANS
- MILITARY HISTORY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Republic of Texas makes treaty with North Texas Indians (1838)
- "Wolf of the Washita" born in Tennessee (1840)
- Surveyor shoots lawyer in Austin colony feud (1830)
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