Help with this autograph!

[RichardSimon]

I am not sure the specific battles that were fought in that time period but I do know that the Japanese were fighting to the death wherever they could and inflicting terrible casualties on American forces.
That was one of the reasons that Truman decided to drop the bomb.
I am still virtually certain that this was a printed document, but I would certainly be glad to look at it.
One hint to the owner - look at the back of the page, out of any frame, and see if there is any evidence of a pen groove where Truman's "signature" would be.
I always enjoy these "detective stories" in the autograph field. A refreshing change from the torrent of plain old forgeries.
I just did some postal detective work on a 1951 Willie Mays rookie signature, which is posted on the Giants thread, and that was fun, especially when I could prove that it was a rookie Mays signature.

[pow323]

Richard, Thanks to you and all the other comments that were made about the Truman autograph. I see no evidence of a pen groove but it looks to me like a ink pen sig. that would not push through the thick paper. I don`t know it is hard to tell but it looks like a real sig. to me! Anyway what would it be worth if it were just an auto pen? Thanks again for your help! Marc (Also if you think that it way be a ture sig. I would be glad to send it to you to take a look at. LMK)

[drc]

For the current wars, the soldier death letters are hand signed by the Secretary of Defense. For a period Donald Rumsfeld had the letters autopenned, but there was a minor uproar when this was discovered and he went back to hand signing them. In short, it is the standard and practice today for them to be hand signed.