Who signed Japan’s surrender for its armed forces immediately after Mamoru Shigemitsu?

Yoshijiro Umezu signed Japan’s surrender for its armed forces immediately after Mamoru Shigemitsu.

Umezu was Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff when Japan surrendered. At the September 2, 1945, ceremony aboard USS Missouri, he signed the Instrument of Surrender as the representative of Japan’s military forces.

His signature followed that of Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, who represented the Japanese government. The separation of the two signatures reflected the structure of Japan’s wartime leadership and made clear that both the civilian government and the armed forces accepted the surrender.

Umezu had opposed surrender during the final weeks of the war and was one of the senior figures involved in the debates over accepting the Potsdam Declaration. He nevertheless signed the document after Emperor Hirohito’s decision to end the war.

Afterward, Umezu was tried at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, dying in prison in 1949.