What was hideki tojo famous for

Tojo entered the Japanese Army Cadet School in , at the age of 15 and in at the age of 21 he was appointed second lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army.

In Tojo was the Japanese Army bureau chief and soon became colonel. He continued to advance in his military career, and in his interest in politics and his position in the military helped him to become appointed Prime Minister.

Tojo became known as 'Razor Tojo' because he was efficient and strict. Tojo became Kwantung Army chief of staff in In Tojo led two brigades in Inner Mongolia, where he had his only experiences in combat during his military career.

In Tojo became army vice minister and in he became army minister. Tojo wanted an alliance between Japan, Germany, and Italy and pushed for it in the government. By he was promoted to major general and served as Chief of the Personnel Department within the army ministry. He called for Japan to become totalitarian in order to prepare for the next war.

Tesions The relations between Japan and China reached a crisis point. Japan successfully captured the Chinese capital Nanking. The army proceeded to systematically rape and kills its people for six weeks in what is known as the Rape of Nanking. Economic sanctions were imposed on Japan by the United States in order to cripple it, but it had a different effect. The sanctions emboldened Japan to align against the US. Prince Konoe had chosen Tojo to secure his armies backing with foreign policy.

Konoe favoured Germany in mediating an end to the Sino-Japanese War. Tojo was a supporter of the Tripartite Pact and continued to expand the war with China.

He declared that any withdrawal from Indochina would make them seem weak. They were, however, unsure whether to wage war or pursue diplomatic negotiations in order to regain gasoline supplies. In October, Konoe was politically isolated and resigned, with Tojo later assuming the command. In November, Emperor Hirohito received the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and later approved the war with the West.

The Hull note was proposed to the Japanese by the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in which he proposed to Japan to withdraw all military forces from China and Indochina in exchange for the lifting of the oil embargo. However, some inconsistencies remained. Tojo chose to misinterpret the Hull Note as an ultimatum thus the war with the United States began. Tojo continued to hold his position as Prime Minister while also concurrently serving as the minister of Home, Foreign, Education, Commerce and Industry.

Initially, the Japanese were overjoyed by their victory after victory experience. Difficulties lay with the Japanese army, however. Throughout the war, Tojo was hamstrung by the ineffective bureaucracy and infighting among the armed forces. I am a general. The death rate of Western prisoners in Japan, for example, was seven times higher than the ones in Germany.

On the other hand, Tojo did approve the resettlement of Russian-Jewish refugees into Manchuria, despite German protestations. The Japanese were pushed back from all their conquered territories and confidence in the Prime Minister slipped even further. It became clear to many Japanese in positions of power that Japan lost the war. They forced Tojo to resign due to the fact that he was in no position to negotiate a peace treaty or ensure the survival of Japan. Tojo resigned on 18 July, after the Japanese suffered defeat at Saipan.

He was easy to find but he did not submit and decided to kill himself. He was taken to hospital and patched up, before being moved to the Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. He was bitterly condemned by some Japanese for failing to kill himself as honour demanded.

In November , all the accused were found guilty. There were misgivings at the time about whether all the right people had been tried. Some thought that Emperor Hirohito should have been in the dock, but MacArthur considered it essential to protect him so that the changes the Americans were introducing in Japan would enjoy the imperial blessing.

With hindsight he was surely right, but the decision was distinctly controversial. There were other notorious figures who were not prosecuted. One of them was Ishii Shiro, who had been head of Japanese bacteriological and chemical warfare research. His notorious Unit in Manchuria had carried out vicious experiments on captive Mongolians, Koreans, Russians and Americans, some of them prisoners of war, some civilians, and some Japanese criminals.

The experiments included injecting American prisoners with bubonic plague. The Americans have since been accused of protecting Shiro and his subordinates in return for getting the results of the experiments. On the whole, MacArthur and the Americans were agreeably surprised by Japanese acceptance of the trials.