Which Japanese foreign minister signed first at the 1945 surrender ceremony?

Mamoru Shigemitsu was the Japanese foreign minister who signed first at the 1945 surrender ceremony.

Shigemitsu signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard USS Missouri at about 9:04 a.m. on September 2, 1945. He signed on behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government.

He was accompanied by General Yoshijirō Umezu, who signed for Imperial General Headquarters. Shigemitsu’s formal attire and artificial leg made him one of the most recognizable figures in photographs of the ceremony; he had lost his leg in a 1932 assassination attempt in Shanghai.

After the war, Shigemitsu was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and convicted of war crimes. He was paroled in 1950 and later returned to political life, serving again as Japan’s foreign minister before his death in 1957.