Yoshijirō Umezu

General Yoshijirō Umezu was chief of the Japanese Army General Staff at the end of the Second World War and signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of the armed forces. He was born in Ōita to a family that had run a bookshop since the eighteenth century, graduated first in his class from the Army Staff College in 1911, and served as a military attaché in Europe. He was associated with the Control Faction, the group within the army that wanted expansion managed by the general staff rather than by young officers staging assassinations, and he helped suppress the attempted coup of February 1936. He commanded the Kwantung Army in Manchuria from 1939, which made him effectively the governor of the puppet state of Manchukuo, and he was appointed chief of the general staff in July 1944. He opposed surrender until the emperor's decision, then enforced it, and helped put down the attempted palace coup by officers trying to prevent the broadcast. He signed for the army aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, an act he is said to have regarded as a personal humiliation and undertook only when told the emperor wished it. He was tried at the Tokyo tribunal, convicted of waging aggressive war, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He converted to Christianity in prison and died of cancer at Sugamo in January 1949. His signature on the surrender document is placed below that of the foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu. He had threatened to resign rather than sign, and relented only after being told directly that it was the emperor's wish. At the Tokyo tribunal he refused to give evidence in his own defence, saying that responsibility rested with him as a commander regardless of what he had personally ordered. He was one of the few defendants there whose bearing drew comment from the prosecution.

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