Hideki Tojo
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50 free Hideki Tojo trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hideki Tojo was the general who led Japan's government when it attacked Pearl Harbor, and for Allied audiences he became the face of the enemy in the Pacific War. Behind the caricature was a workaholic staff officer whose rise, fall and trial still shape how the war is remembered. This quiz follows him from a strict Tokyo boyhood through the army's feuds of the 1930s, the decisions for war in 1941, the defeats that brought his cabinet down, and the tribunal that judged him. Along the way are the odd details people search for: a prank played on him in prison, the fate of his remains, and what became of his family. It is written for history fans, students and quiz hosts. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up the story even on the questions you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A dentist secretly drilled a Pearl Harbor taunt into Hideki Tojo's prison dentures in which form?
Morse code
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.
Q 02Which emperor appointed General Hideki Tojo prime minister of Japan weeks before Pearl Harbor?
Hirohito
Hirohito chose Tojo over an imperial prince, reasoning that a royal premier would stain the throne if a war with the West were lost.
Q 03What became of Hideki Tojo's ashes, according to US Army papers made public in 2021?
Scattered at sea
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.
Q 04Which nickname did Hideki Tojo earn in the army for his legalistic mind and quick decisions?
Razor
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.
Q 05How did Hideki Tojo try to avoid arrest when American soldiers surrounded his house in 1945?
Shot himself in the chest
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.
Q 06Allied forces used Hideki Tojo's surname as their reporting name for which Japanese weapon?
A fighter aircraft
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.
Q 07The tribunal that convicted Hideki Tojo was modeled on the trial of Nazi leaders in which city?
Nuremberg
Nuremberg set the pattern, but the Tokyo trial of 28 Japanese leaders lasted more than twice as long, running from 1946 to 1948.
Q 08The fall of which Pacific island in July 1944 forced Hideki Tojo to resign as premier?
Saipan
Saipan's loss turned Japan's elite against Tojo: the Emperor rejected his offer to reshuffle the cabinet and insisted the whole government go.
Q 09Which American general ordered the arrest of Hideki Tojo and dozens of other suspects in 1945?
Douglas MacArthur
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.
Q 10Hideki Tojo's father came from which hereditary class of feudal Japan before joining the new army?
Samurai
Samurai by descent, the Tojos were respectable but poor; the class system was formally abolished in 1871, and his father rose to lieutenant general.
Q 11By which method was Hideki Tojo executed in December 1948 after his conviction for war crimes?
Hanging
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.
Q 12Hideki Tojo's name has been enshrined since 1978 at which Tokyo shrine to Japan's war dead?
Yasukuni
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.
Q 13Opposition to Hideki Tojo grew within Japan's elite after defeat in which June 1942 naval battle?
Midway
Midway cost Japan four fleet carriers six months after Pearl Harbor, and the tide of the war turned against Tojo's government.
Q 21Hideki Tojo took command in 1935 of which feared Japanese military police force in Manchuria?
Kempeitai
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.
Q 22Hideki Tojo belonged to which army clique, known in Japanese as the Tōseiha, in the 1930s?
Control Faction
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.
Q 23Which shogun, who preached unpleasant duty over pleasure, was Hideki Tojo's boyhood hero?
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Q 14Which resource did the United States embargo in 1941 after Hideki Tojo's army entered southern Indochina?
Oil
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.
Q 15In which Tokyo prison was Hideki Tojo held during his trial and executed in December 1948?
Sugamo
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.
Q 16Hideki Tojo rejected protests from which country after Japan's army let Jewish refugees into Manchukuo?
Germany
Germany was the complainant, although Tojo knew it well: he had served there as a military attaché from 1919 to 1922.
Q 17Which prince did Hideki Tojo succeed as prime minister of Japan in October 1941?
Fumimaro Konoe
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.
Q 18Hideki Tojo was a strong supporter of which 1940 alliance binding Japan to two European dictatorships?
Tripartite Pact
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.
Q 19The Tokyo prison where Hideki Tojo was executed was demolished and replaced by which landmark?
Sunshine 60
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.
Q 20Hideki Tojo became chief of staff in 1937 of which Japanese force garrisoning Manchuria?
Kwantung Army
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.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the shogunate that ruled Japan until 1868, suited a boy remembered as stubborn, humorless and fond of getting into fights.
Q 24Hideki Tojo's lasting dislike of Americans began with which 1905 treaty, brokered by Theodore Roosevelt?
Portsmouth
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.
Q 25Hideki Tojo's mother was the daughter of which kind of man, leaving the family respectable but poor?
Buddhist priest
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.
Q 26Hideki Tojo served in which region in 1918–19 with Japan's force intervening in the Russian Civil War?
Siberia
Siberia was a brief posting for Tojo, who went on from the expeditionary force to three years in Europe as a military attaché.
Q 27Hideki Tojo opposed executing American airmen captured after which April 1942 bombing attack on Tokyo?
Doolittle Raid
Doolittle Raid fliers faced death sentences that Tojo feared would bring reprisals; the Emperor commuted five of the eight but let three men die.
Q 28Hideki Tojo ordered Japanese troops to abandon which Pacific island at the end of 1942?
Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal was given up only after Tojo sacked numerous General Staff officers who opposed a withdrawal from the island.
Q 29Which Indian nationalist was an observer at the Asian leaders' conference Hideki Tojo opened in 1943?
Subhas Chandra Bose
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.
Q 30The loss of the Marianas under Hideki Tojo put Japan's cities within range of which American bomber?
B-29 Superfortress
The B-29 Superfortress could reach Tokyo, about 1,500 miles to the north, from airfields on the captured islands.