Seishiro Itagaki signed the regional surrender document in Singapore on September 12, 1945.
Itagaki represented the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia at the ceremony held in Singapore’s Municipal Building. He signed on behalf of Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, commander of the Japanese Southern Army Group. Lord Louis Mountbatten accepted the surrender for the Allies.
The event followed Japan’s central surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay by ten days. It was necessary because Japanese forces were spread across a vast region and operated under separate commands. Local ceremonies formally transferred control of those forces and their territories to the Allied powers.
Itagaki had previously served as Japan’s minister of war and was a senior army officer. After the war, he was convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and executed in 1948 for war crimes.