Yasuji Okamura represented Japan at the September 9, 1945 surrender ceremony in Nanjing.
Okamura was commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army, the main Japanese command responsible for forces in China. After Japan’s national surrender, he signed the surrender document for Japanese forces in the China-Burma-India theater at the ceremony in Nanjing.
The Nanjing ceremony took place one week after the formal signing aboard USS Missouri. It addressed Japanese forces in China and was a regional surrender ceremony rather than the ceremony that formally ended Japan’s war with the Allies as a whole.
General He Yingqin accepted the surrender for the Chinese side. Okamura’s identity is easy to confuse with Yoshijiro Umezu, who signed Japan’s principal surrender instrument in Tokyo, or Mamoru Shigemitsu, who signed it for the Japanese government.