Which Japanese general signed second for Japan at the USS Missouri surrender ceremony?

Yoshijiro Umezu signed second for Japan at the USS Missouri surrender ceremony.

Umezu was chief of the Japanese Army General Staff and signed on behalf of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. He placed his signature on the Japanese Instrument of Surrender at 9:06 a.m. Japan Standard Time, two minutes after Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed for the Emperor and government.

The order of signatures was deliberate. Shigemitsu represented Japan’s political authority, while Umezu represented the armed forces whose surrender was being formally accepted. Umezu reportedly opposed surrender but followed the decision of the Japanese government and Emperor Hirohito.

Umezu was later tried before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was convicted of several counts and sentenced to life imprisonment, dying in prison in 1949. His signature on the surrender document is therefore both a military acknowledgment of defeat and a key record in the legal aftermath of the war.