Hideki Tojo
Hideki Tojo was a Japanese general and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1941 to 1944 during the Second World War. His leadership was marked by widespread state violence and mass killings perpetrated in the name of Japanese nationalism.
Born in Tokyo to a military family, Tojo was educated at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and began his career in the Imperial Japanese Army in 1905. He served as a military attaché in Germany from 1919 to 1922, and rose through the ranks to become a general in 1934. In March 1937, he was promoted to chief of staff of the Kwantung Army whereby he led military operations against the Chinese in Inner Mongolia and the Chahar-Suiyan provinces. Later in 1938, Tojo was recalled to Tokyo to serve as vice-minister of the army. By July 1940, he was appointed minister of the army in the premiership of Fumimaro Konoe.
On the eve of the Second World War's expansion into Asia and the Pacific, Tojo was an outspoken advocate for a preemptive attack on the United States and its European allies. Appointed prime minister on 17 October 1941, he oversaw the Empire of Japan's decision to go to war against the West as well as its ensuing conquest of much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands in the early years of World War II. During the course of the conflict, Tojo presided over numerous war crimes, including the massacre and starvation of thousands of POWs and millions of civilians.
After the war's tide decisively turned against Japan, Tojo resigned as prime minister on 18 July 1944. Following his nation's surrender to the Allied powers in September 1945, he was arrested, convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in the Tokyo Trials, sentenced to death, and hanged on 23 December 1948. To this day, Tojo's complicity in the July 1937 invasion of China, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and numerous acts of mass murder have firmly intertwined his legacy with the Empire of Japan's warmongering brutality during the early Shōwa era.
Early life and education
Hideki Tojo was born in the Kōjimachi district of Tokyo on December 30, 1884, as the third son of, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. Under the bakufu, Japanese society was divided rigidly into four castes; the merchants, artisans, peasants, and the samurai. After the Meiji Restoration, the caste system was abolished in 1871, but the former caste distinctions in many ways persisted afterwards, which ensured that those from the former samurai caste continued to enjoy their traditional prestige. Tojo's family came from the samurai caste though the Tojos were relatively lowly warrior retainers for the great daimyō that they had served for generations. Tojo's father was a samurai turned Army officer and his mother was the daughter of a Buddhist priest, making his family very respectable but poor.Tojo had an education typical of Japanese youth in the Meiji era. As a boy, Tojo was known for his stubbornness, lack of a sense of humor, and tenacious way of pursuing what he wanted. He was an opinionated and combative youth who was fond of getting into fights with other boys. Japanese schools in the Meiji era were very competitive, and there was no tradition of sympathy for those who failed, and were often bullied by the teachers. Those who knew him during his formative years deemed him to be of only average intelligence. However, he was known to compensate for his observed lack of intellect with a willingness to work extremely hard. Tojo's boyhood hero was the 17th-century shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu who issued the injunction: "Avoid the things you like, turn your attention to unpleasant duties." Tojo liked to say, "I am just an ordinary man possessing no shining talents. Anything I have achieved I owe to my capacity for hard work and never giving up." In 1899, Tojo enrolled in the Army Cadet School.
In 1905, Tojo shared in the general outrage in Japan at the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the war with Russia and was seen by the Japanese people as a betrayal, as the war did not end with Japan annexing Siberia, which popular opinion had demanded. The Treaty of Portsmouth was so unpopular that it set off anti-American riots known as the Hibiya incendiary incident, as many Japanese were enraged at the way the Americans had apparently cheated Japan as the Japanese gains in the treaty were far less than what public opinion had expected. Very few Japanese people at the time had understood that the war against Russia had pushed their nation to the verge of bankruptcy, and most people in Japan believed that U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt who had mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth had cheated Japan out of its rightful gains. Tojo's anger at the Treaty of Portsmouth left him with an abiding dislike of Americans. In 1909, he married Katsuko Ito, with whom he had three sons and four daughters.
Military career
Early service as officer
Upon graduating from the Japanese Military Academy in March 1905, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry of the IJA. In 1918–19, he briefly served in Siberia as part of the Japanese expeditionary force sent to intervene in the Russian Civil War. He served as a Japanese military attache to Germany between 1919 and 1922. As the Imperial Japanese Army had been trained by a German military mission in the 19th century, the Japanese Army was always very strongly influenced by intellectual developments in the German Army, and Tojo was no exception. In the 1920s, the German military favored preparing for the next war by creating a totalitarian Wehrstaat, an idea that was taken up by the Japanese military as the "national defense state." In 1922, on his way home to Japan, he took a train ride across the United States, his first and only visit to North America, which left him with the impression that the Americans were a materialistic soft people devoted only to making money and to hedonistic pursuits like sex, partying, and drinking.Tojo boasted that his only hobby was his work, and he customarily brought home his paperwork to work late into the night and refused to have any part in raising his children, which he viewed both as a distraction from his work and a woman's duty. He had his wife do all the work of taking care of his children. A stern, humorless man, he was known for his brusque manner, his obsession with etiquette, and his coldness. Like almost all Japanese officers at the time, he routinely slapped the faces of the men under his command when giving orders. He said that face-slapping was a "means of training" men who came from families that were not part of the samurai caste and for whom bushido was not second nature.
In 1924, Tojo was greatly offended by the Immigration Control Act, which was passed by the US Congress. It banned all Asian immigration into the United States, with many representatives and senators openly saying the act was necessary because Asians worked harder than whites. He wrote with bitterness at the time that American whites would never accept Asians as equals: "It shows how the strong will always put their own interests first. Japan, too, has to be strong to survive in the world."
By 1928, he was bureau chief of the Japanese Army and was shortly thereafter promoted to colonel. He began to take an interest in militarist politics during his command of the 8th Infantry Regiment. Reflecting the imagery often used in Japan to describe people in power, he told his officers that they were to be both a "father" and a "mother" to the men under their command. Tojo often visited the homes of the men under his command, assisted his men with personal problems, and made loans to officers short of money. Like many other Japanese officers, he disliked Western cultural influence in Japan, which was often disparaged as resulting in the ero guro nansensu movement as he complained about such forms of "Western decadence" like young couples holding hands and kissing in public, which were undermining traditional values necessary to uphold the kokutai.
Promotion to army high command
In 1934, Tojo was promoted to major general and served as chief of the personnel department within the Army Ministry. Tojo wrote a chapter in the book Hijōji kokumin zenshū, a book published in March 1934 by the Army Ministry calling for Japan to become a totalitarian "national defense state". This book of fifteen essays by senior generals argued that Japan had defeated Russia in the war of 1904–05 because bushidō had given the Japanese superior willpower as the Japanese did not fear death unlike the Russians who wanted to live, and what was needed to win the inevitable next war was to repeat the example of the Russian-Japanese war on a much greater scale by creating the "national defense state" to mobilize the entire nation for war. In his essay, Tojo wrote "The modern war of national defense extends over a great many areas" requiring "a state that can monolithically control" all aspects of the nation in the political, social and economic spheres. Tojo attacked Britain, France and the United States for waging "ideological war" against Japan since 1919. Tojo ended his essay by stating that Japan must stand tall "and spread its own moral principles to the world" as the "cultural and ideological war of the 'imperial way' is about to begin".Tojo was appointed commander of the IJA 24th Infantry Brigade in August 1934. In September 1935, Tojo assumed top command of the Kempeitai of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Politically, he was nationalist, and militarist, and was nicknamed "Razor", for his reputation of having a sharp and legalistic mind capable of quick decision-making. Tojo was a member of the Tōseiha in the Army that was opposed by the more radical Kōdōha faction. Both the Tōseiha and the Kōdōha factions were militaristic groups that favored a policy of expansionism abroad and dictatorship under the Emperor at home, but differed over the best way of achieving these goals. The Imperial Way faction wanted a coup d'état to achieve a Shōwa Restoration; emphasized "spirit" as the principal war-winning factor; and despite advocating socialist policies at home wanted to invade the Soviet Union. The Control faction, while being willing to use assassination to achieve its goals, was more willing to work within the system to achieve reforms; wanted to create the "national defense state" to mobilize the entire nation before going to war and, while not rejecting the idea of "spirit" as a war-winning factor, also saw military modernization as a war-winning factor and the United States as a future enemy just as much as the Soviet Union.
During the February 26 coup attempt of 1936, Tojo and Shigeru Honjō, a noted supporter of Sadao Araki, both opposed the rebels who were associated with the rival "Imperial Way" faction. Emperor Hirohito himself was outraged at the attacks on his close advisors, and after a brief political crisis and stalling on the part of a sympathetic military, the rebels were forced to surrender. As the commander of the Kempeitai, Tojo ordered the arrest of all officers in the Kwantung Army suspected of supporting the coup attempt in Tokyo. In the aftermath, the Tōseiha faction purged the Army of radical officers, and the coup leaders were tried and executed. After the purge, Tōseiha and Kōdōha elements were unified in their nationalist but highly anti-political stance under the banner of the Tōseiha military clique, which included Tojo as one of its leaders.
Tojo was promoted to chief of staff of the Kwantung Army in 1937. As the "Empire of Manchukuo" was, in reality, a Japanese colony in all but name, the Kwangtung Army's duties were just as much political as they were military. During this period, Tojo became close to Yōsuke Matsuoka, the fiery ultra-nationalist CEO of the South Manchuria Railway, one of Asia's largest corporations at the time, and Nobusuke Kishi, the Deputy Minister of Industry in Manchukuo, who was the man de facto in charge of Manchukuo's economy. Though Tojo regarded preparing for a war against the Soviet Union as his first duty, Tojo also supported the forward policy in Northern China, as the Japanese sought to extend their influence into China. As chief of staff, Tojo was responsible for the military operations designed to increase Japanese penetration into the Inner Mongolia border regions with Manchukuo. In July 1937, he personally led the units of the 1st Independent Mixed Brigade in Operation Chahar, his only real combat experience.
After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident marking the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tojo ordered his forces to attack Hebei Province and other targets in northern China. Tojo received Jewish refugees in accordance with Japanese national policy and rejected the resulting Nazi German protests. Tojo was recalled to Japan in May 1938 to serve as vice-minister of the army under Army Minister Seishirō Itagaki. From December 1938 to 1940, Tojo was Inspector-General of Army Aviation.