Hideki Tojo

December 30, 1884 – December 23, 1948

Japanese general and Prime Minister of Japan from 1941 to 1944, who led Japan into war with the United States. He was executed for war crimes in 1948.

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Biography

Hideki Tojo was born in Kōjimachi, Tokyo, in 1884 into a military family and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1905, later attending the Army War College. After serving as military attaché in Germany, he rose in the 1930s as a leader of the army's Control Faction, and in 1937, as chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, he directed operations in the invasion of China.

Appointed army minister in July 1940, he pressed for an alliance with Germany and Italy, and in October 1941 Emperor Hirohito made him prime minister. His government put the country on a total-war footing, used the Kempeitai military police to suppress dissent, and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. At times he also held the home, foreign, education, commerce and munitions portfolios, and in November 1943 he hosted the Greater East Asia Conference.

Japan's defeats after Midway eroded his position, and the fall of Saipan forced him out in July 1944. After the surrender he shot himself when American soldiers came to arrest him in September 1945 but survived. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convicted him of war crimes, and he was hanged in December 1948.