Japan signed a separate surrender to China in Nanjing on September 9, 1945. The ceremony took place four days after Japan’s formal surrender to the wider Allied coalition in Tokyo Bay.
General He Yingqin accepted the surrender on behalf of the Republic of China from General Okamura Yasutsugu, commander of Japanese forces in China. The ceremony addressed the Japanese forces that had fought in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Nanjing had been the capital of the Republic of China before the wartime government moved inland to Chongqing. Japanese forces had captured Nanjing in 1937, and the city became associated with the Nanjing Massacre, making the 1945 surrender there especially significant.
This event was separate from the September 2 ceremony aboard USS Missouri. The Tokyo Bay document ended Japan’s war with the principal Allied powers, while the Nanjing ceremony handled Japan’s surrender to Chinese forces in the China theater.