Image: General Hideki Tojo lies semiconscious, limp in a chair with a gaping bullet wound just below the heart after a botched attempt to kill himself as American soldiers surround his house. September 11, 1945. (Public Domain).

On this day in history, November 12, 1948, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was sentenced to death by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. He was declared guilty of seven counts of war crimes and was condemned to death by hanging.

On December 23, 1948, the United States hanged a fragile, spectacled 64-year-old man. The inmate, Hideki Tojo, had been sentenced for committing war crimes by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, and he was the highest-ranking officer from Japan to be put to death. To his final day, Tojo asserted that “The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous.” Nonetheless, he did apologize for the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Hideki Tojo was a notable individual in the Japanese government, as a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, the head of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the Prime Minister of Japan from October 17, 1941, to July 22, 1944. Prime Minister Tojo was responsible for arranging the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. The day after the Pearl Harbor attack, American President Franklin Roosevelt requested that Congress declare war on Japan, officially making the United States a participant in World War II.

Hideki Tojo was born in 1884 into a military family of samurai ancestry. His father was part of the first group of soldiers since the Imperial Japanese Army had substituted samurai warriors after the Meiji Restoration. Tojo advanced with honors from the army war college in 1915 and rapidly rose in the military ranks. He was renowned within the armed forces as “Razor Tojo” for his administrative effectiveness, stringent devotion to detail, and staunch observance of protocol. He was exceedingly loyal to the Japanese state and the military. In his rise to leadership within Japan’s army and government, he became an emblem of Japan’s militarism and insularity. With his distinctive look of close-cropped hair, mustache, and round eyeglasses, he turned into the caricature by Allied propagandists of Japan’s military regime during World War II.

In 1935, Tojo took charge of the Kwangtung Army’s Kempetai, or military police force in Manchuria. The Kempetai was a military police force, much like the Gestapo of the Stassi. In 1937, Tojo was promoted again to Chief of Staff of the Kwangtung Army. In July of that year, he experienced his only actual combat involvement when he commanded a brigade in Inner Mongolia. The Japanese defeated Chinese Nationalists and Mongolian United Autonomous Government.

By 1938, Tojo was withdrawn to Tokyo to function as army vice minister in the Emperor’s Cabinet. In July 1940, he was elevated to army minister in the second Fumimaroe Konoe government. In that position, Tojo promoted a coalition with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In the meantime, interaction with the United States worsened as Japanese soldiers moved southward into Indochina. Even though Konoe contemplated discussions with the United States, Tojo encouraged against them, advocating war unless America revoked its embargo on all trading with Japan. Konoe opposed this and subsequently resigned.

While still an army minister, Tojo was given the prime ministership of Japan in October 1941. At various moments during World War II, he also acted as the minister of foreign affairs, home affairs, education, commerce, industry, and munitions.

In December 1941, Prime Minister Tojo authorized plans for concurrent attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, British Malaya, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines. Japan’s quick triumph and lightning-fast Southern Expansion made Tojo extremely popular with ordinary Japanese citizens.

Even though Tojo had public support, he was thirsty for more power and was an expert at assembling control into his own hands. Yet, he could never create a true fascist dictatorship like those of his idols, Hitler and Mussolini. The Japanese power structure, headed by the emperor God Hirohito, thwarted his goal of total control. Even at the pinnacle of his power, the navy, the court system, industry, and of course, Emperor Hirohito stayed outside Tojo’s command.

In July 1944, the fortunes of war were not favoring Japan or Hideki Tojo. With the loss of Saipan to the Americans, the emperor forced Tojo to resign. After the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and Japan’s surrender, Tojo recognized that the Americans would probably detain and arrest him.

As the Americans drew near, Tojo had an obliging doctor mark a large X on his chest with charcoal to indicate where his heart was. He then entered an adjoining room and shot himself directly through the mark. Sadly for him, the bullet managed to miss his heart and traveled through his stomach instead. When the Americans entered to detain him, Tojo was found lying on a bed, bleeding profusely. “I’m very sorry that it is taking me so long to die,” he told them. The Americans hurried him to the emergency room, where his life was saved.

Hideki Tojo was put on trial in front of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for war crimes. During his testimony, he took every occasion to champion his own guilt and asserted that the emperor was faultless. This was favorable for the Americans, who had already determined they did not dare hang the emperor because they feared a general uprising. Tojo was found guilty of seven counts of war crimes, and on November 12, 1948, he was condemned to death by hanging.

Tojo was hanged on December 23, 1948. In his final written submission, he requested that the Americans show mercy to the Japanese people, who had suffered terribly during the war and the two atomic bombings. Tojo’s ashes were split between the Zoshigaya Cemetery in Tokyo and the notorious Yasukuni Shrine.

In 1978, despite the protestations of many Japanese citizens against honoring the man they felt had brought disaster to Japan, Tojo’s name, along with thirteen other “class A” war criminals, was memorialized at Yasukuni, the shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the memory of warriors fallen in service to the imperial family.

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