Eight non-American Allied national representatives signed after Chester Nimitz at Japan’s 1945 surrender ceremony.
Nimitz signed as the representative of the United States after Douglas MacArthur signed as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. The eight representatives who followed him represented China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
This count concerns the Allied national delegates who signed after Nimitz, not the total number of people who signed the instrument. MacArthur and Nimitz were both American signatories, while the other eight represented the additional Allied governments formally present.
The sequence reflected the Allied coalition that had fought Japan across the Pacific and Asia. It also shows why the ceremony was more than a bilateral American-Japanese event: the surrender was made to the Allied powers collectively, even though the United States played the dominant operational role in the final ceremony.