Yoshijiro Umezu signed the surrender document for Imperial General Headquarters in 1945.
Umezu was chief of the Army General Staff, Japan’s highest-ranking army officer, when the surrender ceremony took place aboard USS Missouri. He signed after Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu had signed for the Japanese government. His signature represented the Imperial Japanese military command rather than the civilian cabinet alone.
The distinction mattered because the surrender document bound both Japan’s government and its armed forces. General Douglas MacArthur accepted the surrender on behalf of the Allied powers, followed by representatives of the United States and eight other Allied nations. Umezu had opposed surrender during the final crisis but ultimately followed the emperor’s decision. After the war, he was tried before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, convicted of war crimes, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1949.