Which Canadian officer signed Japan’s surrender after accidentally signing on the wrong line?

Lawrence Moore Cosgrave was the Canadian officer who accidentally signed Japan’s surrender on the wrong line.

Cosgrave represented Canada at the ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945. When he signed the document, he placed his signature one line too low, on the line intended for France. The error was corrected by American general Richard Sutherland, who crossed out the mistaken label and wrote in the Canadian designation.

The mistake did not invalidate the surrender. Cosgrave signed the Allied copy correctly, and the corrected Japanese copy was accepted by the Japanese delegates. Accounts connect the error to Cosgrave’s blindness in one eye, caused by a First World War injury.

Cosgrave was a Canadian army officer and diplomat. During the Second World War, he served as Canada’s military attaché in Australia for the Southwest Pacific Area. His brief mistake became one of the best-known small details of the surrender ceremony because the document itself preserved the correction.