Tomoyuki Yamashita formally surrendered Japanese forces in the Philippines at Baguio in September 1945.
Yamashita was the commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines during the final stage of the war. He surrendered at Camp John Hay’s American Residence in Baguio on 3 September 1945, one day after the ceremony aboard USS Missouri. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright and Lieutenant General Arthur Percival were present for the Philippine surrender ceremony.
The surrender in Baguio was a regional capitulation, not the document signed by Japan’s central government for the entire Allied coalition. Japanese forces throughout the Pacific and Asia surrendered in separate ceremonies to the commanders responsible for each area. This is why several surrender dates and locations appear in accounts of V-J Day.
Yamashita is often remembered by the nickname “the Tiger of Malaya,” earned during Japan’s rapid conquest of British Malaya and Singapore in 1941–1942. After the war, he was tried by a military commission in Manila and executed in 1946 for war crimes committed by troops under his command.