each of the Allied Powers: Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States (9:12 a.m.) General Hsu Yung-chang for China (9:13 a.m.) Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser for the United Kingdom (9:14 a.m.) Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko for the Soviet Union (9:16 a.m.) General Sir Thomas Blamey for Australia (9:17 a.m.) Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave for Canada (9:18 a.m.) Général de Corps d'Armée Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque for France (9:20 a.m.) Lieutenant Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich for the Netherlands (9:21 a.m.) Air Vice-Marshal Leonard M. Isitt for New Zealand (9:22 a.m.) The UK invited Dominion governments to send representatives to the ceremony as subordinates to its own. MacArthur supported the government of Australia's demand to attend and sign separately from the UK, although Australia objected to his recommendation that Canada, the Netherlands, and France also sign the document. On 6 September, Colonel Bernard Theilen took the document and an imperial rescript to Washington, D.C., and presented them to President Harry S. Truman in a formal White House ceremony the following day. The documents were then exhibited at the National Archives. Flags at the ceremony The deck of the Missouri was furnished with two American flags. A commonly heard story is that one of the flags had flown over the White House on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. However, Captain Stuart Murray of USS Missouri explained: That special flag on the veranda deck of the Missouri had been flown from Commodore Matthew Perry's flagship in 1853–54 when he led the U.S. Navy's Far East Squadron into Tokyo Bay to force the opening of Japan's ports to foreign trade. MacArthur was a direct descendant of the New England Perry family and cousin of Commodore Matthew Perry. Photographs of the signing ceremony show that this flag is displayed reverse side showing (stars in the upper right corner). This was because American flags on the right of an object plane, ship, or person have the stars on the upper right corner, to look like the flag is heading into as if attached to a pole and someone is carrying it. Stars in the upper left of a flag displayed on the right side of the object could make the flag look like it were going away from battle. The cloth of the historic flag was so fragile that the conservator at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum directed that a protective backing be sewn