General Hideki Tojo

Biography

Hideki Tojo was born on December 30, 1884, in Tokyo, the son of a general. He became the dominant military-political figure of wartime Japan and the face of Japanese militarism at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal — a man who directed the expansion of the war across Asia and the Pacific, and who was hanged for it in 1948. Tojo graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1905 and spent three decades rising through the army hierarchy. He served in various staff and command positions, developing a reputation as an efficient, hard-working, humorless administrator and a fierce proponent of military expansion. By the late 1930s he was a major figure in the 'Imperial Way' faction of the Japanese military that advocated aggressive expansion in Asia. As Vice-Minister and then Minister of War, he was a key advocate for Japanese expansion into China and, later, for the attack on the United States. Tojo became Prime Minister in October 1941, at the very moment Japan was completing its planning for the attack on Pearl Harbor. As Prime Minister and simultaneously serving as Army Minister and later as Chief of the Army General Staff, he concentrated more power in his person than any Japanese leader since the Meiji era, earning comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini. He directed Japan's war across the Pacific and in China, the Philippines, Malaya, Burma, and across Southeast Asia — initially with stunning success, then with grinding attrition as American industrial power began to tell. The fall of Saipan in July 1944 — which brought American bombers within range of the Japanese home islands — was the political crisis that ended Tojo's government. He resigned in disgrace and was replaced by a succession of Prime Ministers who moved toward the war's end. When Japan surrendered, Tojo attempted suicide with a pistol but survived. He was arrested by American military police, tried before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, found guilty of war crimes and crimes against peace, and hanged at Sugamo Prison on December 23, 1948 — the same day as General Matsui.

Key Battles