50 Fun Facts About Hideki Tojo

A dentist secretly drilled a Pearl Harbor taunt into Hideki Tojo's prison dentures in which form?

Morse code spelled out a three-word reminder of Pearl Harbor; the dentist feared a court-martial for plain lettering, and it was removed after three months when the secret got out.

Which emperor appointed General Hideki Tojo prime minister of Japan weeks before Pearl Harbor?

Hirohito chose Tojo over an imperial prince, reasoning that a royal premier would stain the throne if a war with the West were lost.

What became of Hideki Tojo's ashes, according to US Army papers made public in 2021?

Scattered at sea: a US Army plane dropped the ashes about 30 miles east of Yokohama on the day of the execution, and their fate stayed a mystery for decades.

Which nickname did Hideki Tojo earn in the army for his legalistic mind and quick decisions?

Razor, or Kamisori in Japanese, suited a man who boasted that his only hobby was his work and who took paperwork home to labor late into the night.

How did Hideki Tojo try to avoid arrest when American soldiers surrounded his house in 1945?

Tojo shot himself in the chest but missed his heart, and as he bled he told two Japanese reporters he was sorry it was taking him so long to die.

Allied forces used Hideki Tojo's surname as their reporting name for which Japanese weapon?

A fighter aircraft, the Nakajima Ki-44, was Tojo to the Allies; its Japanese name Shōki honors a mythical vanquisher of ghosts and evil beings.

The tribunal that convicted Hideki Tojo was modeled on the trial of Nazi leaders in which city?

Nuremberg set the pattern, but the Tokyo trial of 28 Japanese leaders lasted more than twice as long, running from 1946 to 1948.

The fall of which Pacific island in July 1944 forced Hideki Tojo to resign as premier?

Saipan's loss turned Japan's elite against Tojo: the Emperor rejected his offer to reshuffle the cabinet and insisted the whole government go.

Which American general ordered the arrest of Hideki Tojo and dozens of other suspects in 1945?

Douglas MacArthur ordered the arrests; historians Herbert Bix and John Dower argue his staff also worked to shield the Emperor and shift ultimate blame onto Tojo.

Hideki Tojo's father came from which hereditary class of feudal Japan before joining the new army?

Samurai by descent, the Tojos were respectable but poor; the class system was formally abolished in 1871, and his father rose to lieutenant general.

By which method was Hideki Tojo executed in December 1948 after his conviction for war crimes?

Hanging ended Tojo's life 41 days after the verdict, a week before his 64th birthday; in a final statement he apologized for the atrocities of Japan's military.

Hideki Tojo's name has been enshrined since 1978 at which Tokyo shrine to Japan's war dead?

Yasukuni quietly added Tojo and other convicted wartime leaders to its rolls, and Japan's emperor refused to visit from that year until his death.

Opposition to Hideki Tojo grew within Japan's elite after defeat in which June 1942 naval battle?

Midway cost Japan four fleet carriers six months after Pearl Harbor, and the tide of the war turned against Tojo's government.

Which resource did the United States embargo in 1941 after Hideki Tojo's army entered southern Indochina?

Oil and gasoline exports were cut off entirely, and Tojo argued that yielding to American demands would only invite harsher ones, so Japan might be better off choosing war.

In which Tokyo prison was Hideki Tojo held during his trial and executed in December 1948?

Sugamo had earlier held Japan's political dissidents and the Soviet spy Richard Sorge; the Allied occupation took it over to house suspected war criminals.

Hideki Tojo rejected protests from which country after Japan's army let Jewish refugees into Manchukuo?

Germany was the complainant, although Tojo knew it well: he had served there as a military attaché from 1919 to 1922.

Which prince did Hideki Tojo succeed as prime minister of Japan in October 1941?

Fumimaro Konoe quit after Tojo, his own war minister, opposed any troop withdrawal from China; he took poison in 1945 before he could be arrested.

Hideki Tojo was a strong supporter of which 1940 alliance binding Japan to two European dictatorships?

The Tripartite Pact tied Tokyo to Berlin and Rome and was aimed mainly at the United States, the country Tojo's cabinet attacked the following year.

The Tokyo prison where Hideki Tojo was executed was demolished and replaced by which landmark?

Sunshine 60 rose on the site in 1978 as the tallest skyscraper in Japan; an engraved stone praying for eternal peace is all that commemorates the jail.

Hideki Tojo became chief of staff in 1937 of which Japanese force garrisoning Manchuria?

The Kwantung Army ran the puppet state of Manchukuo as a colony in all but name, so Tojo's duties there were as much political as military.

Hideki Tojo took command in 1935 of which feared Japanese military police force in Manchuria?

Kempeitai officers under Tojo arrested suspected sympathizers of a failed 1936 coup, and as premier he later used the force to suppress dissent across Japan.

Hideki Tojo belonged to which army clique, known in Japanese as the Tōseiha, in the 1930s?

The Control Faction preferred working within the system to its rivals' talk of a coup, and it purged those rivals from the army after their 1936 mutiny failed.

Which shogun, who preached unpleasant duty over pleasure, was Hideki Tojo's boyhood hero?

Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the shogunate that ruled Japan until 1868, suited a boy remembered as stubborn, humorless and fond of getting into fights.

Hideki Tojo's lasting dislike of Americans began with which 1905 treaty, brokered by Theodore Roosevelt?

Portsmouth ended the war with Russia on terms so far short of public hopes that riots broke out in Japan, where many felt America had cheated them.

Hideki Tojo's mother was the daughter of which kind of man, leaving the family respectable but poor?

A Buddhist priest was Tojo's maternal grandfather; Tojo himself married Katsuko Ito in 1909 and left the raising of their seven children entirely to her.

Hideki Tojo served in which region in 1918–19 with Japan's force intervening in the Russian Civil War?

Siberia was a brief posting for Tojo, who went on from the expeditionary force to three years in Europe as a military attaché.

Hideki Tojo opposed executing American airmen captured after which April 1942 bombing attack on Tokyo?

Doolittle Raid fliers faced death sentences that Tojo feared would bring reprisals; the Emperor commuted five of the eight but let three men die.

Hideki Tojo ordered Japanese troops to abandon which Pacific island at the end of 1942?

Guadalcanal was given up only after Tojo sacked numerous General Staff officers who opposed a withdrawal from the island.

Which Indian nationalist was an observer at the Asian leaders' conference Hideki Tojo opened in 1943?

Subhas Chandra Bose came as head of the Provisional Government of Free India; his soldiers later marched with the Japanese invasion that Tojo approved in 1944.

The loss of the Marianas under Hideki Tojo put Japan's cities within range of which American bomber?

The B-29 Superfortress could reach Tokyo, about 1,500 miles to the north, from airfields on the captured islands.

Which general replaced Hideki Tojo as prime minister of Japan when his cabinet fell in July 1944?

Kuniaki Koiso resigned in turn once the battle for Okinawa began, and after the surrender he too was convicted of war crimes, dying in jail in 1950.

Which minister in Hideki Tojo's cabinet later led Japan himself and was Shinzo Abe's grandfather?

Nobusuke Kishi's defiance helped bring down Tojo's cabinet in 1944; he was held as a war crimes suspect until 1948 and led Japan from 1957.

Hideki Tojo told his cabinet that which American diplomatic document of November 1941 was an ultimatum?

The Hull note was marked tentative and set no deadline, yet Tojo's reading of it became one of the principal excuses for choosing war.

Hideki Tojo opposed the rebel officers in which 1936 coup attempt, named for the date it began?

The February 26 Incident saw rebels attack the Emperor's close advisers; its leaders were tried and executed, and Tojo's faction took over the army.

Sir William Webb, president of the tribunal that tried Hideki Tojo, was a judge from which country?

Australia's William Webb wrote in his own opinion that the Emperor bore responsibility too, though the monarch was never put on trial.

Which Indian judge at Hideki Tojo's trial wrote a dissent finding every defendant not guilty?

Radhabinod Pal argued the tribunal was applying new crimes retroactively, but verdicts needed only a majority of the eleven judges.

Which relative of Hideki Tojo ran for Japan's upper house in 2007 while defending his wartime record?

His granddaughter Yuko insisted Japan had fought in self-defense, but even fellow nationalists kept their distance from her campaign.

Hideki Tojo's son Teruo, who designed passenger planes, became an executive at which Japanese firm?

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries made Teruo Tojo an executive after a design career that began with military planes during his father's war.

Hideki Tojo sent his forces into northern China after a July 1937 clash at which landmark near Beijing?

Marco Polo Bridge gave its name to the incident that opened the Second Sino-Japanese War, and Tojo's troops struck Hebei Province in its wake.

The Senjinkun code issued in Hideki Tojo's name in 1941 told soldiers to die rather than face what?

Being taken prisoner was cast as a lasting shame, and the pocket-sized code was later blamed for numerous suicides by soldiers and civilians alike.

While jailed in Tokyo after the war, Hideki Tojo sometimes did which chore for other accused leaders?

Tojo served their meals on occasion, because the jail's Japanese food was prepared by Japanese staff but handed out by the inmates themselves.

Which foreign minister quit Hideki Tojo's cabinet in 1942 over a new ministry for occupied territories?

Shigenori Tōgō saw the new Greater East Asia Ministry as an insult to his diplomats; Tojo, backed by the Emperor, said he could not care less how they felt.

Which Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal advised the Emperor to make Hideki Tojo prime minister in 1941?

Kōichi Kido later turned on his choice: after the Marianas defeat in 1944 he spread word that the Emperor no longer supported Tojo.

Which imperial prince did Hideki Tojo back for premier in 1941, only for the Emperor to refuse?

Higashikuni got the job in the end: he became prime minister days after Japan's 1945 surrender, the only member of the imperial family ever to head a cabinet.

Which American, appointed by President Truman, was chief prosecutor at the Tokyo trial of Hideki Tojo?

Joseph Keenan's prosecution secretly arranged for Tojo to revise testimony in which he had referred to the Emperor's ultimate authority.

Hideki Tojo's only combat experience came leading a brigade in which 1937 Inner Mongolia campaign?

Operation Chahar took the city of Kalgan that August, and Tojo, then a staff chief in Manchuria, led its expeditionary force in person.

Which other former prime minister of Japan was executed on the same day as Hideki Tojo in 1948?

Kōki Hirota was one of seven defendants sentenced to death, although one of the tribunal's own judges, B. V. A. Röling, had called for his acquittal.

Hideki Tojo approved the 1944 U-Go offensive, which collapsed at Kohima and which other battle?

Imphal and its sister battle doomed an invasion force that carried food for only 20 days and was counting on capturing British supplies.

Which 1998 Japanese film cast Hideki Tojo as a national hero forced into war and tried unfairly?

Pride was one of the highest-grossing Japanese films of 1998, though the response abroad was highly critical of its historical revisionism.

Hideki Tojo fired navy chief Osami Nagano after an American air raid wrecked which base in 1944?

Truk was Japan's main naval base in the central Pacific, and the two-day raid of February 1944 destroyed the fuel stored there for ships and planes.