Hideki tojo

Key Facts & Summary

 Hideki Tojo was an Imperial Japanese Army general and Prime
Minister of Japan through most of WWII, most famous for his attack
on Pearl Harbor.
 The Pearl Harbor attack marked the beginning of the Pacific War,
which would continue until 1945.
 America and Britain began to take action that suggested they were
close to war with Japan in late 1941, prior to the attack on Pearl
Harbor.
 Tojo became known as ‘Razor Tojo’ because he was efficient, and
rose up quickly in the army ranks.
 Hideki Tojo led Japanese forces in Manchuria during the Sino-
Japanese War in the 1930s.
 Tojo became Kwantung Army chief of staff in 1937.
 In 1938 Tojo became army vice minister and in 1940 he became
army minister.
 Tojo wanted an alliance between Japan, Germany, and Italy and
pushed for it in the government.
 Tojo served as the Prime Minister and army minister during WWII,
and in 1944 he took the additional command of chief of the Army
General Staff.
 Tojo wanted to create a dictatorship like those of Joseph Stalin in
Russia and Adolf Hitler in Germany but he was not successful.
 While serving as Prime Minister Tojo also held the positions of
Foreign Minister, Education Minister, Home Minister, and Minister of
Commerce and Industry.
 Hideki Tojo began to lose popularity in the later years of WWII. He
was forced to resign on July 18th, 1944 after the fall of Saipan to
the Allied Forces on July 9th, 1944.
 Assassination plots began to surface in the summer of 1944, but
they were not successful. Many expected Tojo to commit suicide.
 Tojo was tried for war crimes, found guilty and sentenced to death.
Hideki Tojo was hanged on December 23rd, 1948.

Prologue
A politician and a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, Hideki
Tojo also served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the
Imperial Rule Assistance Association. Tojo’s voice was among the
loudest concerning the preventive war against the United States
during deliberations leading up to Pearl Harbor. Upon becoming
Prime Minister, he presided much over the conquest of the West’s
territories in Asia and the Pacific until the defeat of Japanese forces
at Midway and Guadalcanal.

His years in power gave him the tools for perpetuating numerous
war crimes including the systematic massacre and starvation of
civilians and prisoners of war. But the war’s tide increasingly turned
against Japan leading to Tojo’s late resignation as Prime Minister.
Japan’s surrender was inevitable, soon after Tojo was sentenced to
death by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was
hanged on 23 December 1948.

Hideki Tojo
Born in the Kojimachi district of Tokyo on the December 30, 1884,
Tojo was the third son of Hidenori Tojo, a lieutenant general in the
Imperial Japanese Army. In this period Japanese society was
divided in four castes: Merchants, Artisans, Peasants and Samurai.
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the caste system was slowly
abolished, ending in 1871 but the distinctions remained and
persisted. This somehow ensured the former samurai’s caste
traditional prestige. Tojo’s family came from such a caste, though
they were relatively low warriors for the great daimyos. His father
was turned from samurai to army officer while his mother was the
daughter of a Buddhist priest, making the family respectable, but
poor.