1945 Japanese Surrender Document

[tmenyc]

This past weekend, my wife and I were in Washington DC visiting a daughter. She lives quite near the Capitol, so having her there has been a great opportunity to reacquaint with the National Mall and all the museums over time. This weekend we saw the National Archives, and I was fascinated by the WWII Japanese Instrument of Surrender exhibit. The display is horizontal, so you can lean right over the glass and see the signatures of all of the major military and foreign affairs representatives of the nations present. General Macarthur's signature is so much broader than the others, and the ink so bright and less faded than the others, that I thought they all used their own pens. This morning I got back to work, looked it up, and the photo clearly shows ceremonial pens and what appear to be inkwells. I'm curious if anyone here knows anything about this. The photo below is from Wikipedia, here (the variations in ink on the original in the exhibit are much clearer than in the photos in Wikipedia.)

 

Tim

[tmenyc]

The thought occurred that what I thought were inkwells were probably not...probably embossing stamps.

 

Tim

[dcwaites]

See this previous post.

[tmenyc]

wow, thanks...never occurred to me to search here! So Macarthur's daily carry was a 20 year old Duofold!

 

Tim