A Small Canadian Mistake on the USS Missouri Nearly Halted Japan’s Surrender

Eighty years ago, U.S. President Harry Truman authorized the U.S. Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan. Just days earlier, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, a Canadian diplomat made a slight error that nearly derailed the official end of World War II.

On Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese officials were brought aboard the Missouri to formally surrender. In the weeks leading up to that day, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been reduced to rubble by atomic bombs. Soviet forces had overrun Japanese positions in Manchuria. Chinese troops were pushing forward, and Allied forces were preparing for an invasion of Kyushu.

Facing total destruction, Emperor Hirohito took to the radio for the first time in history, famously telling his people the war had "developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” Even then, a group of hardline officers attempted a coup to stop the surrender, but it was quickly crushed. Japan was in ruins.

Aboard the Missouri, General Douglas MacArthur waited. His forces had stormed across the South Pacific, eventually liberating the Philippines. Standing beside him were Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright—who had endured nearly four years of brutal captivity after surrendering at Corregidor—and British General Arthur Percival, the former commander at Singapore. Both appeared frail, stark reminders of Japanese wartime atrocities.

Only sailors over six feet tall were chosen to stand witness to the event, a deliberate show of Allied strength.

The Allied delegation included Admiral Chester Nimitz, who led U.S. forces across the Central Pacific, and British Admiral Bruce Fraser. Chinese General Hsu Yung-chang, Soviet General Kuzma Derevyanko, and French General Philippe Leclerc were present, along with Dutch Admiral Conrad Helfrich. Representatives from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada also stood by.

Japan’s delegation was led by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff. They were joined by other reluctant officials from Japan’s army, navy, and foreign ministry. Many other Japanese officials had refused to participate at all.

Faced with towering U.S. sailors, battle-hardened generals, and the haunting faces of Wainwright and Percival, the Japanese knew they were beaten.

Two copies of the surrender document were placed on the table—one for the Allies and one for Japan. Both had to be signed.

At exactly 9:04 a.m., Shigemitsu signed first, “by command and on behalf of the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese government.” Umezu followed, signing on behalf of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters before the rest of the delegation signed.

MacArthur then signed for the U.S. at 9:08 a.m. The rest of the Allies followed, until Canada’s turn. That’s when things went sideways.

Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave, a World War I veteran who had reportedly lost vision in one eye in combat, represented Canada. As he approached the table, he locked eyes with Shigemitsu, and they smiled at each other. Both men had met years earlier on a diplomatic mission in China. 

Although there were no problems with the Allied copy, his poor vision caused him to sign on the wrong line on the Japanese copy. Instead of placing his name on the line for Canada, he signed where France was supposed to.

French General Leclerc, next in line, noticed the mistake and hesitated. Instead of raising the issue, he simply signed on the line marked for the Netherlands. Admiral Helfrich, representing the Dutch, followed suit and signed in the wrong place as well.

By the time it was New Zealand’s turn, their representative, Air Vice-Marshal Leonard Isitt, was left with nowhere to sign. Confused, he simply wrote his name off to the side.

When the Japanese delegation inspected the document, they stood up in protest. It was, they insisted, invalid as several names were clearly in the wrong places.

MacArthur was not amused. His chief of staff, General Richard Sutherland, stepped in. Calmly, he approached the document, crossed out the incorrect nation labels, rewrote them, and initialed next to each correction. Then he handed the corrected copy back to the Japanese. “Now it’s all fine,” he reportedly said, and motioned for them to leave.

And that was that. The most destructive war in human history had officially ended with an ink-smudged document and a bureaucratic blunder that almost derailed it. Cosgrave received decades of undeserved press for the incident. Many remembered him as the man who signed on the wrong line instead of a Canadian war hero.

The Japanese copy, complete with crossed-out names and signatures, is on display at the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Japan.