Presidential Proclamation 2714 (61 Stat. 1048) was signed by President

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

on December 31, 1946, to officially declare the cessation of all hostilities in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Even though the actual combat of the war ended May 8, 1945, in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

and September 2, 1945, in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, the state of war was not lifted off of Japan and Germany in order to give a reason for the necessity of occupation troops in these countries. Once the War Crime Trials were over, the hostilities were seen as over.

Legal Effects

The signing of Proclamation 2714 is the legal basis for the end of World War II. As a result, any person who served between

December 7, 1941 The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

, and December 31, 1946, is considered a World War II veteran. Furthermore, the signing of the proclamation coincided with the termination of wartime statutes. In 1976, President

Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...

signed Proclamation 4417 which declared that Proclamation 2714 voided the justification for

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

and thus made it inoperable.

Text

The Text of the Proclamation is as follows:

References

UCSB
Politics of World War II Proclamations 1946 in military history December 1946 events in the United States Presidency of Harry S. Truman United States presidential directives {{World-War-II-stub