Titans of History

TOJO

1884–1948

The Greater East Asian War was justified and righteous.

Hideki Tojo, after his failed suicide bid in September 1945

General Hideki Tojo, nicknamed the Razor, was prime minister of Japan during much of the Second World War, the architect of its imperial aggressions, and the force behind its appalling policy of aggrandizement and brutality that cost the lives of millions and destroyed his own country. Yet it is futile to lay the blame for Japan’s atrocities and aggression on one man: Tojo was merely the representative of a prevalent mindset and conduct amongst a Japanese nobility, bureaucracy and military, supported enthusiastically by the public. New research has shown that the Emperor Hirohito was himself fully involved in the commands that led directly to the murder of so many.

Tojo, the son of a general, embarked on a military career at a young age, serving as an infantry officer, a military attaché and an instructor at the military staff college. By 1933 he was a major general. Prior to this Tojo had become a member of a hard-right militaristic group that expounded fanatical ultra-nationalism. However, during the attempted coup by ultra-nationalists on February 26, 1936 Tojo remained loyal to Emperor Hirohito and assisted in its suppression.

Tojo’s loyalty was rewarded in 1937 when he was named chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. In this position he played an important role in launching the Second Sino-Japanese War—an eight-year conflict that would leave millions dead as the Japanese military ignored both human decency and the laws of war in pursuit of imperial conquest in China. Noncombatants—men, women and children—were deliberately targeted, resulting in such atrocities as the so-called Rape of Nanking, in which, between December 1937 and March 1938, Japanese troops butchered between 250,000 and 350,000 Chinese civilians.

As the war in China progressed, the Japanese army tightened its control over the civilian government, and Tojo became more deeply immersed in politics. In May 1938 he was appointed deputy minister of war in the government of Prince Fumimaro Konoe. In that role he was one of the more vocal advocates of a pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and also pushed for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union.

In July 1940 Tojo became minister of war, and proceeded to oversee Japan’s formal entry into the Axis alliance with Germany and Italy. By July 1941 Tojo had convinced Vichy France to endorse Japanese occupation of several key bases in Indo-China—a move that paved the way for US sanctions against Japan and increased tensions between the two countries. When Fumimaro Konoe was finally pushed into retirement in October 1941, Tojo, while holding on to his portfolio as minister of war, stepped up to replace him as prime minister. He immediately declared his commitment to the creation of a New Order in Asia. Initially, he supported the efforts of his diplomats to bring this about through agreement with the United States. But as it became clear that no deal was possible with the USA on the terms desired, he authorized the attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that unleashed the war in the Pacific.

Victorious Japan overran Singapore, Malaysia, much of China, the Philippines, Indonesia and a vast swathe of the Pacific, pushing toward India through Burma, but the US Navy destroyed the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and thereafter gradually retook the Pacific under General MacArthur. Tojo assumed almost dictatorial powers, but in the aftermath of the American capture of the Marianas in July 1944 he resigned.

Tojo bore responsibility for the Japanese conduct of the war, which was almost as barbaric as that of the Nazis in Europe. The Japanese archives show that Emperor Hirohito was not the pawn of the militarists but enthusiastically supported and directed them. Hirohito must share some of the responsibility shouldered by Tojo for Japan’s war crimes. During the Sook Ching massacre of February–March 1942, for instance, up to 50,000 ethnic Chinese were systematically executed by Japanese forces in Singapore. At the same time, the Japanese embarked on the Three Alls policy in China—by which Japanese troops were ordered to “Kill all, burn all and loot all” in order to pacify the country, resulting in the killing of 2.7 million civilians. Another example of the brutal effects of Japanese militarism was the infamous Bataan Death March. After a three-month struggle for the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, some 75,000 Allied troops (comprising around 64,000 American and 11,000 Filipino troops) formally surrendered to Japanese forces on April 9, 1942. They were then forced to undertake a march to a prison camp sixty miles away. On the journey, many were executed—stopping without permission was taken as a sign of insubordination and met with instant retribution. Many more died from the conditions they endured. Here is the testimony of one POW, Lester Tenney, who experienced the Death March and lived to tell the tale:

The Japanese soldiers arrived in our area at 6:00 a.m. on April 10, 1942, and after a few minutes of hollering and seeking cigarettes, they herded us together and forced us to walk to the main road on Bataan and we took with us only those possessions we had on our bodies at that time. Many had no canteen and no head covering. So we marched for the first four days without food or water … We walked from sun up to sun down. No lunch break, no dinner, and sleeping was in a large warehouse that could easily hold 500 men but was crowded with 1200 men who had little if any space to lay down. And when you had to remove your body waste you were forced to do it on the floor where you slept … I saw with my own eyes a POW being killed with a bayonet into his back because he stopped at a free flowing artesian well for a cup of water. Killed for a drink of water. And what about the Caribou wallows that lined every road in the Philippines where the animals sat during the hot days. The water in those wallows was filthy, and contained among other things, animal dung. But when you are thirsty and without water for days on end, a desire for water takes over your sense of right and wrong and you leap from the line of marchers and push the scum on top of the water away so you could get a drink of this so-called water. Dysentery was the end result, and death followed closely behind.

Even after Tojo had stepped down, the barbaric rules that he had helped create, in which human life was deemed valueless, endured—resulting in such atrocities as the Manila massacre of February 1945, in which 100,000 Filipino civilians were slaughtered.

Alongside the killing, the Japanese carried out hideous medical experiments on captured prisoners and subject populations. Biological and chemical weapons were tested on selected victims; others were operated on without anesthetic, or exposed to the elements to see how their bodies reacted. International conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war were disregarded, and POWs were forced to work in appalling conditions, deprived of food and medicine, and tortured and executed without restraint.

Japan resisted defeat with brutality and suicidal determination. As American forces approached Japan itself and Soviet troops attacked Japanese Manchuria, US nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing surrender.

To this day, the character and scale of what took place remains difficult to comprehend. In the wake of Japan’s unconditional surrender in August 1945 Tojo tried to commit suicide. However, in April 1946, he was placed on trial for war crimes. He was found guilty, and hanged on December 23, 1948. The Americans embraced the Emperor Hirohito as the ideal, much-loved national figure to become the constitutional monarch of a new democratic Japan. Hirohito ruled for a long time—but he was lucky not to be executed with General Tojo.