'Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, wanted officers to wear their daily service clothes — khaki button-up shirts with open collars and no ties...'

A cool story, at the Los Angeles Times, "A look inside the WWII surrender ceremony: 'My job was to make sure we did not screw up'":

James L. Starnes, navigator of the battleship Missouri, was 24 years old when he learned he would play a key role in the ceremony to mark the end of World War II.

After the Japanese conceded defeat, President Truman announced that "Mighty Mo," the behemoth 58,000-ton flagship of the 3rd Fleet, would host the signatories of the instrument of surrender in Tokyo Bay.

"My job was to make sure we did not screw up," said Starnes, 94, who performed the role of officer of the deck the morning of Sept. 2, 1945.

A former lieutenant commander in the Navy who now lives in a retirement community in Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta, Starnes is one of the few remaining veterans who organized the ceremony on the Missouri 70 years ago.

Five years after joining the Navy Reserve's officer-training program as a student at Emory University in Atlanta in 1940, Starnes was responsible for working out the logistics of the ceremony to mark the formal end of the six-year war that had killed more than 60 million people.

At first he prepared for an elaborate, formal affair with ceremonial dress and gleaming sabers. "We thought, well, this has never happened before," he said. "We'll have a big celebration, put on the white uniforms and polish up our swords."

Before the ceremony, however, Starnes got word that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, wanted officers to wear their daily service clothes — khaki button-up shirts with open collars and no ties. "We fought them in our khaki uniforms, and we'll accept their surrender in our khaki uniforms," MacArthur was reported to have said...

Keep reading.

Also from Ms. EBL, "Never Forget: 70th Anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan."