SNA (Tokyo) — Imperial Army leader Hideki Tojo commanded the nation from 1941-1944. Once he decided to launch a total war against the Anglo-American Powers in December 1941, his own authority was tied to the success or failure on the battlefield. For the first six months his gamble appeared to have paid off handsomely, but after the disastrous Battle of Midway in June 1942 Japan entered a war of attrition in which it was gradually overpowered.

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On October 18, 1941, Hideki Tojo became prime minister of Japan.

He was selected for the post because he commanded the Imperial Japanese Army, was popular and respected among his military colleagues, and unlike many other senior officials, he believed that Japan had a reasonably good chance of beating the Anglo-American Powers on the battlefield. Also, it was well understood by everyone that Tojo was absolutely loyal to the Emperor.

The Emperor instructed Tojo to make a careful review of the international situation to determine if there were any alternatives to war with the Anglo-American Powers.

Tojo tackled the task sincerely, but he couldn’t avoid the conclusion that US demands for a Japanese retreat from China and Indochina would be too high a price to pay for a normalization of relations. Washington, too, was uninterested in compromise at this juncture.

At the beginning of December, the Tojo Cabinet made its final decision for war, deciding on a southward thrust against the British domains, with the ultimate objective being the crucial oil fields of the Dutch East Indies; as well as permitting a simultaneous attack against the US Navy at Pearl Harbor led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who aimed to cripple the potential military threat from the Americans in the Pacific Ocean.

The early months of the Pacific War proved to be a remarkable success. While damage to the US Navy at Pearl Harbor was limited, the southward thrust rolled up victory after victory, proceeding faster than an elated Tojo had expected. British forces at Hong Kong and US forces in the Philippines were crushed. An even more impressive victory was scored by General Tomoyuki Yamashita whose numerically inferior army inflicted an unprecedented defeat on the British Empire in Malaya and Singapore. Following up with a lightning offensive in Burma, the entire British presence in East and Southeast Asia was eliminated. Moreover, Japan did take control of the oil fields of the East Indies.

This string of victories naturally buoyed Tojo’s political authority, and he began to contemplate peace terms that might be offered to the Allies in the wake of a spectacularly successful war.

The disaster at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, however, chilled the mood within the top ranks of the government. The loss of the Imperial Navy’s four aircraft carriers ended Japan’s capability to launch any grand offensives on the Pacific Ocean front, and pushed it into a more cautious and defensive posture.

Moreover, the main strategic weakness of Japan—its inability to seriously match US industrial productivity—gradually weighed in as an increasing disadvantage. With each month that went by, American military strength grew and Japan suffered losses in materiel and manpower which it could not adequately replace.

As the war was starting to turn sour in the late summer of 1942, Tojo also faced a political division within his own cabinet. A plan to create a Ministry of Greater East Asia to handle relations with the territories which had fallen under Japanese military rule was strongly opposed by Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo. The foreign minister was worried that the new ministry would both disrupt the coherence of Japanese diplomacy as well as send a signal to the world that Japan intended to rule these territories indefinitely as if they were imperial colonies.

However, Tojo backed the plan to create the new ministry and Togo resigned from the Cabinet in protest.

By late 1942, the war was distinctly turning against Japan. The US military launched its first major offensive at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Although Japanese forces fought hard, they were outnumbered and out supplied. US soldiers were beginning to stand effectively against the assaults of the Imperial Army and to defeat them.

Not long after the defeat at Guadalcanal, the empire suffered a major blow. Admiral Yamamoto, the hero of Pearl Harbor and Navy commander, toured the South Pacific battlefront in order to raise morale. However, US forces decrypted Japanese communications about his flight plans, and in what was called Operation Vengeance Yamamoto’s plane was intercepted in April 1943 and destroyed.

When Yamamoto’s ashes were returned to Tokyo the following month, Tojo himself led a memorial ceremony.

In the Pacific theater, the position of Japanese forces was becoming increasingly vulnerable. In September 1943, the Emperor and Tojo agreed to pull back to a well-armed absolute defense line. Tojo believed that if only Japanese forces could inflict high enough casualties on the United States, then the American public might turn against the war and enter peace negotiations.

But Japan was defending too wide a front with too few resources, and they were gradually outclassed in military technology. Japanese forces couldn’t stop the American advance as they hopped from island to island.

Still, the Imperial Army did maintain capability to launch massive offenses on the Asian continent. If China, at least, made peace or could be knocked out of war, then massive resources could be freed up to deal with the American threat.

Trying a bit of diplomacy, Tojo convened the Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo in November 1943. It aimed to convince the Chinese, and Asians more broadly, that Japan believed in Pan-Asianism; that it was the liberator of Asia from Western colonialism, and did not intend to oppress them. The event proceeded smoothly—and had in fact been micromanaged by Tojo personally—but it did little to change perceptions or the situation on the ground. It also didn’t help that US forces seized Tarawa island in a bloody amphibious landing at about the same time.

With the diplomatic offensive producing little of substance, in 1944 Japan launched its largest-ever military campaign. Over half a million Imperial Army troops went on the offensive in southern China in Operation Ichi-Go, and, at the same time, another 150,000 Japanese troops embarked on a more risky and desperate invasion of India through Burma, hoping to again defeat British forces as well.

For Prime Minister Tojo in early 1944, he needed to score a major victory in at least one of these efforts. As the defeats piled one upon another, his own grip on authority in Tokyo was slipping. After all, he had advocated for the war and had believed in its prospects for victory. By now most Japanese leaders had turned gloomy, looking for a way out that could preserve the nation. For his part, Tojo was not shy about using the military police to ruthlessly suppress dissent when it became too open.

In addition to serving as prime minister, Tojo also took on the offices of Army Minister and Army Chief of Staff. He stepped up to take full responsibility in one last roll of the dice.

It proved to be a disaster—the Nationalist Chinese were pushed back but continued to fight; the invasion of India was a devastating failure; and, worst of all, US forces smashed through the absolute defense line in the Pacific with relative ease.

The last straw was the one-sided Japanese defeats at the Battle of Saipan and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. With these defeats, the Imperial Navy lost its capability to conduct large-scale aircraft carrier operations, and the Japanese home islands were now in range of US air attacks.

Some Japanese leaders—including former prime ministers such as Fumimaro Konoe and Keisuke Okada—had been trying to maneuver Tojo into resignation for a long time. With the loss of Saipan and the Navy’s air power, the Emperor also withdrew his support.

Hideki Tojo was forced to resign on July 22, 1944, after a term of 2 years and 279 days.

In the year yet to come for the Pacific War, Tojo remained one of the most optimistic that Japan could avoid total defeat. Many other Japanese leaders who talked to him in this period noted an air of unreality in his assessments of the situation.

When defeat was confirmed, however, he was resigned to his fate and intended to meet it honorably. He dismissed all suggestions from radical military officers of leading a coup d’etat, always insisting on maintaining loyalty to the Emperor’s commands.

On September 11, 1945, US soldiers surrounded his house with an arrest warrant on charges of war crimes. Tojo pulled out a revolver and shot himself in the chest.

The bullet, however, had missed his heart. He was resuscitated by US soldiers and sent to Sugamo Prison to await trial.

Tojo behaved with dignity at the war crimes trial. He assumed full responsibility for his actions and for the defeat in war. He apologized for all the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army, and only asked that the US military show compassion for the Japanese people, who had also suffered greatly.

Tojo was convicted as a Class A War Criminal and was executed by hanging on December 23, 1948.

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