Canadian representative Lawrence Moore Cosgrave accidentally signed on France’s line.
Cosgrave was signing the Japanese copy of the Instrument of Surrender aboard USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. He placed his signature one line too low, in the space labeled for the French Republic. The mistake was attributed to his blindness in one eye, caused by a First World War injury.
General Richard Sutherland noticed the problem and corrected the document by crossing out the French heading and writing “Dominion of Canada” under Cosgrave’s signature. The correction was accepted by the Japanese delegation, and Cosgrave signed correctly on the separate Allied copy.
France’s actual representative was General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, who signed later in the sequence. The Netherlands and New Zealand also had separate representatives. Because the error was repaired at the ceremony, it did not affect the legal or diplomatic status of the surrender document.