Lawrence Moore Cosgrave

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Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on August 28, 1890. Cosgrave was the son of Lawrence J., founder of Cosgrave & Sons Brewery Company, and brother of James, a partner with E. P. Taylor in horse racings's Cosgrave Stables. Lawrence was a 1912 graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada and subsequently attended McGill University. In World War I he served as a junior artillery officer in the Canadian Field Artillery in France. Cosgrave was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1916, and was later presented with the French Croix de Guerre.

He served as the Assistant Canadian Government Trade Commissioner in London, England (1922-24); Canadian Trade Commissioner, Wembley, London, England (1924); Shanghai, China (1925-35); Melbourne, Australia (1925-37); and Sydney, Australia (1937-42).

In World War II he was the Canadian Military Attache to Australia, S.W.P.A. but his most notable moment came on September 2, 1945 when he was the Canadian representative who signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri. He caused a little known mishap; Colonel Cosgrave inadvertently placed his signature one line too low on the Japanese copy of the documents. He signed on the line for the French Republic. This set off an unfortunate chain whereby each succeeding signer also signed one line too low on that copy of the documents. The Dominion of New Zealand representative, left without a blank to sign, had to have his name and country written in at the bottom margin of the document. (Cosgrave did not repeat this error on the American copy.) The error was "corrected" by General Sutherland who crossed out "French Republic" and wrote in "Dominion of Canada" then made similar corrections for the rest of the document. Both US and Japanese copies of the surrender are on display on the USS Missouri, berthed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

L. Moore Cosgrave died at his home in the Montreal townships on July 28, 1971.