General Douglas MacArthur signed the Allied copy of Japan's surrender document aboard USS Missouri.
The Instrument of Surrender was prepared in two principal versions: an Allied copy and a Japanese copy. MacArthur signed the Allied copy as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, after Mamoru Shigemitsu and Yoshijirō Umezu had signed for Japan. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz then signed as the United States representative.
The ceremony used several pens. MacArthur signed with multiple pens, including a red pen that he gave to his wife and other pens later preserved in museums. General Jonathan Wainwright and Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, both officers associated with earlier Allied defeats, received pens as witnesses.
Missouri's deck is now preserved as part of the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor. The surrender site remains marked on the ship, making the vessel both a museum artifact and the physical location of the document's final signing.