On September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor, representatives of the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender that formalized the defeat of the Empire of Japan in World War II. While the war’s end was undeniably brought about by the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the reality is that it was the U.S. Navy that set the conditions for that hard-fought victory. Without the warships and submarines provided by the 1940 “Two-Ocean Navy Act” and the relentless island-hopping campaigns led by U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz, those Army Air Corps bombers that effectively ended the Pacific War never would have had the opportunity to launch on those historic missions from Tinian’s North Field in today’s Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
If the U.S. had not dropped those two bombs, some experts assess that World War II in the Pacific might not have ended until 1950, with perhaps more than a million more deaths, the occupation of Japan’s northern prefectures by the Soviet Union, and an exhausted post-war America unable to effect the Pax Americana that emerged from that conflict.
America, and its friends and allies globally, cannot afford to forget this essential history. Yet there is currently an Orwellian historical revision campaign, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that is designed to replace that history with an insidiously dangerous CCP fairy tale.
The CCP intends to erase the memory of the surrender being signed aboard this U.S. Navy battleship, in part with a massive military parade in Beijing on September 3, 2025, for what the CCP calls the “80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.” The CCP’s goal for this propaganda display is twofold: 1) to rewrite history by falsely claiming Mao’s Red Army was responsible for defeating the Imperial Japanese forces in China (and, implicitly, within Asia) and 2) to display to the world the totalitarian CCP’s military might built by Xi Jinping over the last thirteen years, a force that now contains “land, sea, and air-based strategic weapons, hypersonic precision strike weapons, and unmanned and counter-unmanned equipment” and now has the potential to defeat U.S. forces in mid-to-high intensity combat.
Proof of the CCP’s strategy of historical revisionism was recently revealed by the Chinese Academy of History, a national-level research institution established in 2020 by President Xi Jinping. In an article published in the Historical Review, the authors assert, “America’s ‘aid’ [during World War II] to China was fundamentally aimed at safeguarding its own interests in China and was by no means based on an equal relationship.” The journal, an appendage of the prominent Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS), further stated at the initial phases of Japan’s invasion of China that the U.S. gave China negligible aid against Japan but instead provided Japan substantial “disguised” assistance. And this week, the CCP’s hawkish propaganda outlet, Global Times, even went so far as to state, “Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, signing the Instrument of Surrender to China and other Allied powers. China celebrated the victory the following day.”
Needless to say, this massive CCP psyop and propaganda display set for display on September 3 will make no reference to America’s major contribution to the Allied victory over Imperial Japan.
These two vastly different interpretations of what happened more than 80 years ago in the Pacific are important because they reflect the much larger competition that is ongoing regarding which system of government will provide freedom, security, peace, and stability for the region and the world. One is based on facts and truth that are central to U.S. national security decisions that will determine if the U.S. survives the 21st century; the other is totalitarian political warfare designed to achieve the CCP’s hegemonic ambitions and to win its ongoing People’s War against America and its principles of freedom and liberty.
The importance of American naval power is a history that needs to be understood by Americans and their elected officials. For instance, one of the reasons Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal recommended to President Truman to have the surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay was in large part because of the importance and leading role naval power had throughout the war in the Pacific. That message was intended not just for Japan but for the rest of the world.
As such, it is worth recalling the words the Director of the Naval Heritage and History Command, Admiral Sam Cox (USN Ret.), made in 2019 on the 75th Anniversary of the commissioning of the USS Missouri:
Xi Jinping and the CCP understand this history and, as a result, have built the PLA Navy into the largest navy on the planet—nearly twice the size of the U.S. Navy, without even counting its massive array of militarized Coast Guard and Maritime Militia vessels. Xi and the Central Military Commission (CMC) have adopted a similar outlook as Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who recognized that the main objective of the IJN was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet and thus force the U.S. to surrender. Less than fifteen years ago, the PLA Navy had no aircraft carriers; today it has three. Less than ten years ago, the PLA Navy had no amphibious assault carriers, but now it has five (one Type 076 and four Type 075). Further, it had no cruisers, and now it has eight Type 055 cruisers, with a similar rapid growth of destroyers, frigates, submarines, support ships, and other combatants and support vessels. Xi and the CMC are on course to achieve their stated goals.
The question for us today is whether the U.S. Congress will provide the appropriations to support a similar type of “Two Ocean Navy Act” as Congress did in 1940. That act authorized no fewer than eighteen new aircraft carriers, seven battleships, thirty-three cruisers, and 115 destroyers, along with other ships. Even with such congressional support and a robust maritime shipbuilding industry, Admiral Nimitz and the Pacific Fleet spent two years essentially fighting with the force structure they possessed on December 7, 1941, that Day of Infamy. They did not begin to receive these new warships authorized in the 1940 legislation until the fall of 1943.
The importance of maritime power in our history is not limited to naval combatants but also includes commercial ships that provided supplies to our forward forces and our allies in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and elsewhere. As noted by Prime Minister Churchill, “the foundation of all our hopes and schemes was the immense shipbuilding program of the United States.” The result of this focus of national will was Henry J. Kaiser’s Liberty Ship Program, which by the winter of 1942 was able to launch the 14,250-ton, 440-foot-long liberty ship Robert E. Peary in just four days and fifteen hours. More than 2,700 of these liberty ships were launched from 1941 through 1945 from eighteen shipyards across America.
As we approach the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, Americans must recognize that Xi Jinping and the CCP intend to erase the world’s memory of how WWII was fought and how and why it ended when it did. It is very important that the U.S. government, among others, counter the CCP’s propaganda and psyops that will be broadcast globally to billions of people, generally poorly educated about World War II.
Likewise, Americans must remember the central role of the U.S. Navy in our victory 80 years ago and call on the Trump Administration to Make America’s Navy Great Again (MANGA). President Trump has led the way with the March 2025 initiation of the Office of Shipbuilding, so now it is time for the U.S. Congress and our nation’s business leaders to ensure that our nation is prepared for major naval warfare in the Pacific. They can do this by passing a MANGA Act that will provide the resources that will ensure America is not defeated like we could have easily been in World War II without the strategic forethought of that greatest generation of Americans.
It’s time for this generation to take on that challenge and earn the same designation. Develop and pass the MANGA Act now!
James E. Fanell served as a career naval intelligence officer whose positions included senior intelligence officer for China at the Office of Naval Intelligence and chief of intelligence for CTF-70, Seventh Fleet, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He is the co-author of the book Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.