Sayonara to officer who sealed Japanese surrender

Published on Saturday 18 April 2009 20:02

THE officer credited with organising the Japanese surrender after the Second World War has been buried.

Lt Col Geoffrey Collingwood Sherman orchestrated the ceremony of Japanese capitulation in Singapore on September 12, 1945, which took place before 50 Allied generals.

Known as Lord Mountbatten's right-hand man, the father of three died aged 93 at his home in Somerset after a short illness.

Last week around 150 people filled a church in the village of Long Sutton, near Langport, where the Union Flag flew on the tower for the first time since the Japanese ceased hostilities.

Lord Louis Mountbatten formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Imperial Army after officers handed over their samurai swords to their opposite numbers. Japanese envoys boarded the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to sign the document.

Lt-Col Sherman, who died on March 22, made the event happen. During the surrender ceremony he received a double-handed samurai sword with notches marking the occasions on which it had been used to defend the family's honour.

Col Sherman's son Nicholas, a managing director from Sixpenny Handley, Dorset, said the Union Flag had been with his father since the historic occasion. Also in church was Nicholas's 87-year-old godmother, who last saw the flag more than 64 years ago when she was in Singapore, serving as secretary to Lt-Gen Frederick "Boy" Browning, the husband of Daphne Du Maurier and Mountbatten's chief of staff.

Col Sherman's son said: "He (my father] did not really talk about the war. He did tell us about organising the event which included answering to Lord Mountbatten's wife, Lady Edwina."

Col Sherman had been married to Evelyn, 91, for almost 70 years, and has three children Anthony 68, Nicholas, 61, and Annabelle 67. After the war he worked for a West African trading company, and served as a superintendent in the Nigerian Special Constabulary. He later joined British Aerospace during production of the Tornado Multi Role Aircraft.