Hideki Tojo

Source

• Born: 1884
• Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
• Died: 23 December 1948 (execution by hanging)
• Best Known As: Japanese Prime Minister during World War II

In the 1930s Hideki Tojo fought in the Sino-Japanese war, leading Japanese forces in occupied Manchuria. He returned to Tokyo in 1940 and held ministerial posts, where he urged an alliance with Germany and Italy against the Allied forces. Tojo became Prime Minister in 1941 and within two months ordered a surprise attack on U.S. naval forces in Hawaii. (The subsequent attack on Pearl Harbor was planned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.) Tojo served as the political and military leader of Japan until 1944, when it was clear the direction of the war had changed. After the war the Allies found Tojo guilty of war crimes and hanged him.

Tojo's nickname was "The Razor."

For more information on Tojo Hideki, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Tokyo, 30 Dec. 1884; d. 23 Dec. 1948) Japanese; Prime Minister 1941 – 4 The son of an army officer, Tojo Hideki was educated at Tokyo Military Academy before starting a career in the army. Between 1919 and 1922 he was military attaché in Germany and Switzerland. After returning to Japan he taught at his Alma Mater before becoming Commander of the 1st Infantry Regiment in 1929. Tojo became involved in the complex factional politics of the times, siding with the tõseiha faction that promoted technological innovation in the Japanese military. In 1935 he was posted to Manchuria, returning to Tokyo as Army vice-Minister in 1938 and advocating the continuation of the war with China. In 1940 he became Minister for War, and advocated closer ties with Germany and Italy. In October 1941 he was appointed Prime Minister, where he pushed for a "southward" strategy of taking over the colonies of the defeated European powers, and eventually the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1944 Tojo resigned as Prime Minister because of the reverses suffered by the Japanese armed forces and the bombing raids on Tokyo.

He attempted suicide in September 1945 to avoid arrest by the Occupation authorities, but following his arrest he did all he could to exonerate Emperor Hirohito of any blame for the war. He was found guilty of war crimes by the Tokyo Tribunal and was executed on 23 December 1948.

Tojo, Gen Hideki (1885-1948). Tojo was the son of a general in the Japanese army, and was called Eiku Tojo until becoming premier in 1941. He graduated from the Japanese military academy in 1905 and in 1915 completed his studies at the war college. Greatly influenced by the lessons of WW I he espoused the theories of total war, and appreciated the need for Japanese military strength to be based on a sound and strong economy. During the 1930s he argued for the reorganization of the Japanese army and the economic integration of the resources provided by Manchuria. He served as chief of police affairs for the Japanese army in China and became its COS in 1937. In May 1938 he became vice minister of war, then minister of war in July 1940. It was in this capacity that he drafted a mobilization strategy that put Japan on course for war with the USA. In October 1941 he became premier, effectively a military dictator, and ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was forced to resign when the USA recaptured Saipan on 9 July 1944. When Japan surrendered he attempted suicide and was despised by his later co-defendants for failing to achieve what he had ordered millions of others to do. Nursed back to health, he was condemned to death by the International Military Tribunal sitting in Tokyo and hanged.

— Stephen Turnbull

Tojo, a graduate of the Japanese Military Staff College, was promoted to lieutenant general in 1936. By that time, he had become both pro‐German and an ardent advocate of Japanese military expansionism in China. In 1937, Tojo became chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in China, and in October 1941, he forced out and succeeded Prince Fumimaro Konoye as Japanese prime minister. Tojo took his country into World War II with the United States with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and he remained prime minister until July 1944, after the fall of Saipan. In 1945, he attempted suicide, but was brought before the International Military Tribunal, Far East, for war crimes and hanged in 1948.

Historians depict Tojo as a militant and expansionist nationalist who underestimated the United States's determination and industrial capacity to fight total war to defeat Japan. In a narrow sense, Tojo was a competent administrator (nicknamed “Razor Tojo”), but he was neither an imaginative strategist nor a skillful political leader. He accelerated Japan's atomic research, worshipped the emperor, and to the end clung to his belief in the innate spiritual strength and victory of the Japanese.

Bibliography

• Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, 1961

Tojo, Hideki (1884-1948) a Japanese soldier and prime minister. After graduating from the Imperial Military Academy and the Military Staff College, Tojo was briefly a military attaché at the Japanese embassy in Berlin after World War I, but, noted as a talented administrative and skilled field commander, he became commander of the 1st Infantry Regiment of the Japanese Army. Having served as chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria during Japan's occupation, he returned to Japan to take up his duties as vice-minister of war in 1938 and actively supported Japan's Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy (1940). Premier Prince Konoe Fumimaro appointed him to his cabinet as minister of war, and Tojo became prime minister in 1941. An efficient bureaucrat and committed militarist, Tojo led Japan's war effort after its attack on the U.S. military installation at Pearl Harbor (1941), and, after initial victories in the Pacific arena, Japan's fortunes turned. and he became chief of the General Staff. He was removed from that position after the U.S. invasion of the Marianas Islands in mid-July 1944, and his entire cabinet resigned only two days later. Having failed in a suicide attempt after Japan's surrender in September 1945, Tojo recovered and was then indicted and tried for war crimes in April 1946 by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was found guilty as charged and hanged.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Hideki Tojo (1884-1948), a Japanese general and premier during World War II, was hanged as a war criminal. He symbolized, in his rise to leadership of the Japanese government, the emergence of Japanese militarism and its parochial view of the world.

Hideki Tojo was born in Tokyo on Dec. 30, 1884, the eldest son in a family of samurai descent. Tojo entered military school in 1899, following in the footsteps of his father, a professional military man who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Sino-Japanese War and as a major general in the Russo-Japanese War. Tojo likewise saw service, though briefly, in the latter war. In 1915 he graduated with honors from the army war college and was subsequently sent abroad for 3 years (1919-1922) of study in Europe. After his return he served as an instructor in military science at the war college.

Brusque, scrupulous, and hardworking, Tojo came to be known as kamisori (the razor) for the sharp, decisive, impatient qualities that he manifested as he rose rapidly through the military hierarchy. He was assigned first to the War Ministry and subsequently to the general staff and various command posts. Promoted to lieutenant general in 1936, Tojo became chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, where he worked effectively to mobilize Manchuria's economy and strengthen Japan's military readiness in the event that war broke out with the Soviet Union. When full-scale hostilities broke out instead between China and Japan following the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Tojo in his first real taste of combat experience led two brigades in a blitzkrieg that quickly brought the whole of Inner Mongolia under Japanese control. In 1938 he was recalled from field service to become vice-minister of war, a position in which he pressed resolutely for preparations that would allow Japan to wage a two-front war against both China and the Soviet Union.

In mid-1940 Tojo was appointed war minister in the second Fumimaro Konoe government, which proceeded at once to sign the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Relations with the United States gradually worsened during succeeding months as Japanese troops moved south into Indochina; but Tojo hewed to a hard line. Convinced of the righteousness of the imperial cause and of the implacable hostility of the Americans, the British, the Chinese, and the Dutch, he stoutly opposed the negotiations and concessions that Konoe contemplated. Speaking for the army command, Tojo demanded a decision for war unless the United States backed away from its embargo on all exports to Japan. When Konoe hesitated, Tojo is reported to have told him that "sometimes it is necessary to shut one's eyes and take the plunge." Konoe, however, was reluctant to take the plunge and instead tendered his resignation.

Leadership in War

An imperial mandate was then given to Tojo in October 1941 to become premier and form a new Cabinet. It was thought that only Tojo had full knowledge of recent developments and an ability to control the army. Tojo was given an imperial command to "wipe the slate clean, " review all past decisions, and work for peace. But a reconsideration of Japanese policy failed to reveal alternatives acceptable to the army, and the decision for war was taken. Within hours after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Tojo broadcast a brief message to his countrymen, warning them that "to annihilate this enemy and to establish a stable new order in East Asia, the nation must necessarily anticipate a long war."

Tojo had great power at the beginning of the war and in the West was often likened to Hitler and Mussolini. Besides serving as premier, he was a general in the army, war minister, and, for a short time, home minister. Later in the war he also served as chief of the general staff. In 1942 a tightly restricted national election resulted in a pro-Tojo Diet. Nonetheless, while wielding great power, Tojo was still not a dictator like Hitler or Mussolini. The senior statesmen, the army and navy general staffs, and, of course, ultimately the Emperor still exercised considerable power independent of Tojo.

Defeat and Dishonor

By early 1944 even though the tide of battle had turned decisively against Japan, and Tojo admitted to the Diet that the nation faced "the most critical situation in the history of the Empire, " he stood firmly opposed to increasing sentiment in favor of negotiation. The fall of Saipan in July 1944, however, put American bombers within range of the home-land, and the senior statesmen together with ministers in Tojo's Cabinet forced him into retirement.

With the end of the war Tojo awaited at his Tokyo residence his arrest by the occupation forces. On Sept. 11, 1945, when Gen. MacArthur ordered his arrest, Tojo attempted to shoot himself. After his recovery he was held in Sugamo prison until his trial as a suspected war criminal by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in May 1946. After proceedings which stretched out over 2 years, during which Tojo willingly accepted his responsibility for much of Japan's wartime policy while declaring it legitimate self-defense, he was found guilty of having "major responsibility for Japan's criminal attacks on her neighbors" and was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on Dec. 23, 1948.

Further Reading

The definitive work on Tojo is Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (1961). A compilation of the 1941 policy conference records, in which Tojo played a leading role, may be found in Nobutaka Ike, ed., Japan's Decision for War (1967). For a revisionist interpretation of the role of the military in foreign-policy decisions see James B. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-1938 (1966).