Canada's representative signed below the intended line on Japan's surrender document.
Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave, the Canadian signatory, accidentally placed his signature below the printed line assigned to Canada. Because the document listed the Allied countries in sequence, the mistake shifted the signatures that followed downward on the Japanese copy.
General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur's chief of staff, corrected the layout by crossing out and rewriting the printed country titles. He initialed each alteration, making the amended document acceptable to the Japanese delegation. The discrepancy is visible in photographs and has become one of the ceremony's best-known small details.
The episode is often misremembered as a mistake by Australia or France. The error was made by Cosgrave, who had lost sight in one eye because of a World War I injury. The Allied copy and Japanese copy differed in how the correction appeared.