Background
Tojo Hideki was born on 30 December 1884 in Tokyo. His father, Tojo Hidenori, was the son of a samurai of the domain of Nambu.
東條 英機
Tojo Hideki was born on 30 December 1884 in Tokyo. His father, Tojo Hidenori, was the son of a samurai of the domain of Nambu.
He attended the Military Staff College, where he studied under the German military instructor Major Klemens Meckel and in time advanced to the rank of lieutenant general.
Tojo Hideki was born in Tokyo and, after attending lower schools maintained by the army, graduated from the Military Academy. In 1905 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He graduated from the Military Staff College in 1915 and thereafter advanced until he reached the rank of lieutenant general in 1936. During this period, he was assigned to posts in Germany and Switzerland.
In 1922 he became an instructor in the military Staff College. In 1929 he joined with Colonel Nagata Tetsuzan and others in leading the principal reform group within the army, which became known as the Tosei (Control) faction. But they were at this time largely eclipsed by a rival group known as the Kod5 (Imperial Way) faction. In 1931 Tojo became a section chief in the General Staff Office and in 1934 he was appointed commander of an infantry brigade. He was sent to Manchuria in 1935 as commander of the military police of the Kwantung Army. In 1937 he became chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. In 1938 he was made vice-minister of war, serving under Minister of War Itagaki Seishiro. He quickly demonstrated his administrative ability and came to be known as “Razor Tojo.”
In 1945, after the surrender, when he was facing arrest by the Occupation authorities, he attempted to take his life with a pistol, but failed in the attempt. He was brought before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East as an A-class war criminal, where he was charged with the highest degree of responsibility for the war. In 1948 he was put to death by hanging along with Itagaki Seishiro and five others who had been similarly charged.
After serving as Commissioner of Aviation, in 1940 he took the post of minister of war in the second Konoe cabinet and continued in that post in the third Konoe cabinet. He led the faction in the army that supported an un-compromising approach in the negotiations between Japan and the United States. In 1941, after the mass resignation of the Konoe cabinet, he was appointed prime minister on the recommendation of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Kido Koichi, who had called a conference of high officials to discuss the matter.
As head of the government, Tojo continued to carry on negotiations with the United States, but in the face of the latter’s adamant attitude, decided to commence hostilities. In the initial stage, his conduct of the war proved successful and he took measures to tighten control over the civilian popula¬tion. In the general election in 1942, he instituted a system of government “recommendation” of candidates, which insured that the Lower House of the Diet would fully support his policies, and after the election he established a single-party government that amounted to a military dictatorship. In the same year, he set up the Daitoa-sho (Greater East Asia Ministry) to deal with representatives of China, Manchuria, Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines, all areas that by this time were largely under Japanese control, as well as with representatives from adjacent countries such as India, though Togo Shigenori, the foreign minister, resigned in protest over the move.
In 1943 he held a Greater East Asia Congress in Tokyo, which adopted a joint declaration calling upon the participants to work for mutual benefit and to respect one another’s independence. As a wartime prime minister he simultaneously held the post of minister or war, and at times also those of foreign minister, minister of home affairs, minister of education, and minister of commerce and industry. In 1943 he established a new post called minister of munitions and assumed that as well. In 1944, he also took on the position of chief of the General Staff, thus assuring that complete control over all political and military decisions would rest in his hands.
He strengthened the power of the militrary police to make certain that there would be no criticisms of his policies. But with the worsening of the military situation and the fall of Saipan, a group of high officials led by Admiral Okada Keisuke began a movement to overthrow him, and in the same year, 1944, they succeeded in bringing about the resignation of his entire cabinet. He was removed from active military service and placed on the reserve list.
