A DORSET man has remembered his late father, who was credited with organising the formal surrender of Japan at the end of the Second World War.

Nicholas Sherman, a managing director from Sixpenny Handley, north Dorset, told how his father Lt Col Geoffrey Collingwood Sherman had treasured a flag from the occasion.

Lt Col Sherman, who lived in Somerset, orchestrated the ceremony of Japanese capitulation in Singapore in September 1945 before Admiral Louis Mountbatten.

Known as Mountbatten’s right-hand man, Lt Col Sherman died aged 93 at his home in Somerset after a short illness. The union flag that was used in the surrender ceremony flew on a church tower for the first time since the Japanese ceased hostilities in honour of the officer Mr Sherman said: “He 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, who demanded that the long signing table should be covered in green baize cloth.

“It had to be green and no other colour and was an impossible task, given the scarcity of all furnishings in Singapore as a result of the Japanese occupation – nevertheless, he succeeded in requisitioning a number of remnants which were then cobbled together.”

Lord Mountbatten formally accepted the surrender of the Japaneseon September 12, 1945. In a separate ceremony on September 2 the Japanese had signed a first instrument of surrender on board the USS Missouri.

Lt Col Sherman had been married to Evelyn, 91, for almost 70 years, and has three children Anthony 68, Nicholas, 61, and Annabelle 67.