<P> USS Missouri (BB - 63) ("Mighty Mo" or "Big Mo") is a United States Navy Iowa - class battleship and was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to be named after the U.S. state of Missouri . Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the United States and is best remembered as the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan which ended World War II . </P> <P> Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944 . In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 . She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600 - ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January / February 1991 . </P> <P> Missouri received a total of 11 battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, and was finally decommissioned on 31 March 1992 after serving a total of 16 years of active service, but remained on the Naval Vessel Register until her name was struck in January 1995 . In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor . </P> <P> Missouri was one of the Iowa - class "fast battleship" designs planned in 1938 by the Preliminary Design Branch at the Bureau of Construction and Repair . She was laid down at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 6 January 1941, launched on 29 January 1944 and commissioned on 11 June with Captain William Callaghan in command . The ship was the third of the Iowa class, but the fourth and final Iowa - class ship commissioned by the U.S. Navy . The ship was christened at her launching by Mary Margaret Truman, daughter of Harry S. Truman, then a United States Senator from Missouri . </P>

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