The time had come for Tojo Hideki and the six other condemned men to die.
Detailed planning for the executions had begun months earlier, based closely on Nuremberg.[1] Hanging was meant as a humiliating death, denying the military men the honor of a firing squad. To prevent posthumous memorials to the dead men, the bodies would be cremated and disposed of, not returned to their families.[2] Unlike at Nuremberg, there would be no photographs of the executions.[3] The U.S. military was convinced that the grisly images of the dead Nazi leaders had been a terrible mistake, and General Douglas MacArthur told an aide that photographs “would violate all sense of decency.”[4]
Nor would any reporters be allowed to attend, to the outrage of the Tokyo press corps. Although the army secretary had wanted to permit a few reporters, MacArthur had furiously shot that down: “The press exploitation of the sordid details of such executions…as was permitted at Nuremberg, is in my opinion repulsive to all standards of human decency and could well destroy the very purposes which such trials and punishments serve.”[5] General Headquarters would simply release a terse notice when it was over, skipping any “gruesome or sensational details.”[6] The executions, done by the U.S. Eighth Army, would be witnessed by doctors and prison staff. MacArthur invited the Allied powers to send official representatives to watch and then certify that the sentences had been carried out: William Sebald, a U.S. diplomat and MacArthur’s political adviser; Patrick Shaw, an Australian official representing the British Commonwealth; General Shang Zhen, a Chinese battlefield commander; and Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko, the Soviet officer who had signed the USS Missouri surrender.[7]
After being sentenced, the condemned war criminals began seeing a Buddhist priest at Sugamo Prison daily. When the priest asked Tojo—clad in a grubby, ill-fitting purple gown over work clothes—why he had shot himself, the former prime minister explained that he had spent his life instructing his subordinates to choose death rather than be captured. He was glad, though, that he had not succeeded, both because he had found religion and because “I was able to clear up certain points during the trial.”
The priest told reporters that Tojo was a changed man, embracing Buddhism, his mind serene.[8] After a lifetime dedicated to violence, the general took on a Buddhist name, which prompted ridicule from Japanese newspapers; one wrote that the name should mean “Atonement in the nether world for sins committed in this.” According to the Buddhist priest, the career army man spent his last days in ascetic spiritual contemplation, expounding that world peace would only be possible when humans lost their avarice, or trying to imagine a celestial Buddha enthroned above a great solar system. Tojo studied an elementary Buddhist book on the holy scriptures into which he had pasted a picture of Emperor Hirohito clipped from a newspaper. He told his wife that he wanted to carry the volume with him to the gallows, which made the Sugamo authorities worried that he would somehow use it to commit suicide. The jailers were especially strict about his own propensity to kill himself, he said wryly.[9]
Tojo, as well as several others, left clippings of his hair and fingernails to be placed in his family shrine as ancestor tokens for veneration. He spent his last days composing poems, writing long letters to his defense lawyers, and drafting a testament titled “To the World,” containing his last political and military opinions, which reportedly echoed his testimony defending the attack on Pearl Harbor.[10]
Most of the other condemned men claimed to face their demise with resignation. There was some bickering among them, blaming the others for talking too much during the trial or for ducking responsibility.[11] Matsui Iwane still claimed that he was innocent.[12] Doihara Kenji rankled at the disgrace of being branded a war criminal but declared himself grateful that his death might prove helpful. He sent a classical poem to his children: “Born like a bubble of foam and to fade like the dew on the grass, my precious being.”
As the country waited, some Japanese warned against a creeping tendency to sympathize with men facing their doom. “People are easily moved by death before their very eyes,” wrote a prominent Asahi Shimbun editorialist, urging its readers not to forget what Tojo and the others had wrought. “Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of children, fathers, and husbands lost their lives day after day on the battlefield, and innocent, good mothers, wives, and children followed them, charred beside the meager air-raid shelters of their homes. A trial in the hearts of these dead would surely have been much more severe than the Tokyo court.”[13]
Promptly after the Supreme Court ruled, on December 21, 1948, at 9 p.m., the seven men were filed into the prison chaplain’s office two at a time. Tojo was brought in alone. They were told that they would be executed at one minute after midnight on December 23.
The men were ashen and grim. Hirota Koki was glassy-eyed.[14] Tojo had feared that they would be jolted awake and then immediately killed; he had things to write. He nodded repeatedly, bowed and said in English “okay, okay” several times. He made several last requests. His jailers could do nothing to get money to the families of the convicted men, and would not allow him sleeping pills—apparently out of fear of suicide. But they did allow him time with the Buddhist priest, a simple Japanese meal, and some sake.
Tojo said that there was a bright light in his cell day and night, and that it was a wonder he hadn’t had a nervous breakdown. “I am able to offer myself as a sacrifice to peace and become one stone in the foundation for the rebuilding of Japan,” he said. “I can die in peace of mind because no trouble was brought upon the Emperor.” He was old and decrepit, he said, and could not go on living much longer anyway; he looked forward to being absorbed into the soil of Japan. He had composed a flurry of farewell poems. One was patriotic: “Though I depart/ Would that I might return to this land of mine,/ For there remains so much to do/ For my country.” Another was reflective: “Not a cloud is there to cross/ And darken the mind./ And with a full heart/ I hurry on my journey West.”
MacArthur told the four Allied representatives to come to Sugamo to witness the hangings.[15] Shang turned pale. Shaw had a whiskey. The Chinese and Soviet officials, not on speaking terms, insisted on riding in separate cars.[16]
It was a cold, bleak winter’s day. Muto Akira was the only one who admitted to waves of terror, but said that the others felt it too.[17] The men spent their last day visiting with the Buddhist priest, writing letters and poems, and saying farewell to each other. As a final dinner, they got rice, miso soup, broiled fish, and meat, as well as bread and jam. They ate little.
In the priest’s telling, the condemned men consecrated their fleeting hours to spiritual purification. Yet this account shows how consumed with worldly statecraft they were even as the minutes ticked away. Hirota Koki asked about the news from China, and when told that the Communists were winning, said that “what we most feared has come to pass.” Matsui complained that impetuous young army officers had brought Japan to its present state and speculated that the Chinese Communists were more moderate than their Soviet comrades. Doihara said that things in China had failed, but hoped that they would be made better by his death. Itagaki Seishiro, too, remained obsessed with China, saying that he prayed for the prosperity of China and Korea, and hoped that in the afterlife he would be able to pursue a unified Asia.
Hirota, too depressed to leave letters or farewell poems, said that he wanted to go to death in silence. Nobody else did. Itagaki said resentfully, “As for the Declaration of Potsdam, I consider that we are sacrifices on the Altar of a Lasting Peace.” Muto was indignant that the Tokyo trial’s prosecutors had accused Japanese troops of bayoneting babies in the Philippines. In a letter to his wife, Matsui wrote, “It happens that I have come to be sacrificed for the Nanking Incident.” Since so many had already died under his command in China—soldiers and civilians, Japanese and Chinese—it was only proper, he wrote, that he follow them himself. He accepted some responsibility for the China war and pledged to make “full apology for everything,” while bitterly mourning “the betrayal and disgrace of a defeated Japan.”[18]
About twenty minutes before midnight on December 22, guards came to the cells of Doihara Kenji, Matsui Iwane, Muto Akira, and Tojo Hideki. Two American guards accompanied each handcuffed man. They were simply dressed in U.S. Army work clothes and Japanese laced shoes.
The four condemned war criminals were taken to a cell being used as a makeshift shrine, which the Buddhist priest had fitted with candlesticks, an incense burner, wine, chocolate and biscuits, cups and water. Since they could not all fit in, they had to pray in the hall. There for seven minutes they received improvised Buddhist last rites with incense. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes. The priest offered cookies but the old men had taken out their dentures; only Matsui munched a soft biscuit. They drank wine from full paper cups with their manacled hands. Tojo was pleased that, as requested, he had gotten at least one drink.
One of the four said, “Banzai”—a battle cry, short for “Long live his Majesty the Emperor.” The army men decided to shout it in defiance. “Matsui-san, if you please,” said Tojo, asking the eldest man to lead them. Tojo and the other generals bellowed in unison, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” Then they yelled the imperial slogan “Dai Nippon!”—Great Japan.[19]
The shouts of “Banzai!” were so loud that Sebald heard them ricocheting through the hush. To him they were a farewell to the emperor and a symbol of defiance.
The men said goodbye to each other. The Buddhist priest thought they were happy. A steel door opened. Flanked by two American soldiers, followed by the Buddhist priest and the U.S. Army chaplain at Sugamo, the condemned men were marched across a cold, dark courtyard to the brightly lit death chamber. Tojo and some of the others chanted the name of Amida Buddha, a traditional way of seeking tranquility and salvation.
As they entered, each man—first Doihara, then Matsui, then Tojo, and finally Muto—was individually identified directly in front of Sebald, Shaw, Shang, and Derevyanko, as well as doctors and prison staffers.
The condemned men continued saying Buddhist prayers. In their shapeless salvage clothing, they struck Sebald as “very old, helpless, pitiful, and tragic. They seemed to shuffle as they walked, and each face was a vacant stare as it passed me.”
Then they were marched up thirteen steps to the gallows platform. They walked their last steps without assistance. Tojo and the others continued to chant.
The American executioners put black hoods over their heads. They fitted ropes to necks.
The chief executioner saluted the commander of the execution detail and said that the four men were prepared. “Proceed!” yelled someone. At 12:01 a.m. on December 23, the hangman gave a signal and all four trapdoors crashed open. Sebald thought the traps sounded like a rifle volley.
The Buddhist priest had assured Tojo that they would die instantaneously as their spinal cords were severed. In fact, it took Doihara six minutes to die. An American senior medical officer listened for heart sounds with a stethoscope. “I declare this man dead,” he said. Muto was pronounced dead after ten minutes and Matsui after eleven minutes. Tojo died after nine minutes. Their trousers were fouled from involuntary discharges of urine and feces.
Immediately afterward, a second group—Itagaki Seishiro, Hirota Koki, and Kimura Heitaro—was marched to the improvised chapel. They had heard the chants of “Banzai!” Hirota edged over to the Buddhist priest and asked earnestly if they had had a manzai—his regional way of pronouncing banzai, which in the priest’s dialect meant a gossipy party. The priest, missing the point, said no. The men lit incense and listened to a reading.
Afterward, Hirota asked again about the banzai, and this time the priest got it. A civilian unaccustomed to war cries, he turned to Itagaki and told the general, “You’d better lead us.” Together the three of them yelled, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”
The priest put wine cups to their lips and they drank. They walked across the courtyard to the bright lights of the death house. According to the priest, they were calm and composed. “There was the same shuffling walk, the same quiet, unidentifiable mumbling, the same hopelessness,” remembered Sebald. As Hirota passed, he turned his head and looked directly into Sebald’s eyes, seeming to appeal for sympathy and understanding.
They were led up the gallows and hooded. At 12:20 a.m., the trapdoors crashed open again.
“I pronounce this man dead,” said the American medical officer. Itagaki died after twelve minutes. Hirota died after fourteen minutes. Kimura died after fifteen minutes.[20]
Sebald was humbled. He recalled, “These men, who had wielded such enormous power and influence, died secretly and alone, surrounded by former enemies.” He and the other shaken witnesses downed whiskey straight.[21]
Outside a light rain drizzled. With maximum secrecy, under heavy guard, the seven corpses were driven away from Sugamo Prison by military vehicles from the United States Eighth Army. At 7:45 a.m., the wooden coffins—apparently American-made, larger than those usually used in Japan—arrived at a drab square stucco building, the municipal crematorium in the bombed-out ruins of Yokohama. Wood and coal flames in seven rusty ovens began to burn the bodies at 8:10 a.m. Under an hour and a half later, they were all reduced to ashes. These were put into U.S. Army regulation boxes, five inches wide and two inches deep.
Tojo had asked that his remains, and those of the other six, be turned over to their families for Buddhist funerals.[22] Led by Tojo’s wife, the families of the condemned men had petitioned MacArthur to let them say prayers over the dead bodies or at least their ashes. General Headquarters refused, fearing that even the private enshrinement of Tojo’s ashes could encourage defiance, with him exalted in death as a kami, a Shinto divine spirit. Instead the remains were taken away by seven American military jeeps, rumored to be bound for an American cemetery. Sentries there with bayonets fixed warded away reporters. In fact, to be sure that burial sites could never become memorials in the future, the ashes of all seven executed war criminals were secretly dumped out over some thirty miles of the Pacific by a U.S. Eighth Army airplane.[23]
“Well, it’s all over,” said a Japanese worker at the crematorium. “It is just what we expected for Tojo.”[24]
MacArthur had asked for a day of prayer: Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and Christian churches were packed. The ancient Senso-ji in Tokyo, known as the Asakusa Kannon Temple, was overflowing, with priests intoning prayers for peace while the bell tolled. The speaker of the Diet’s lower chamber urged the nation to find “a burning desire for peace in the solemn reality of the executions.” The Imperial Palace let it be known that Emperor Hirohito, on hearing the news from the grand chamberlain, had joined the people in offering a silent prayer for peace.[25] The executions happened to have occurred on the birthday of Crown Prince Akihito, which later generations of Japanese hard-liners have taken as a show of spite.[26]
For the most part, the families of the executed men accepted the news with composure. Doihara’s widow said that her husband had completely accepted a life of religion; Itagaki’s widow declared that her husband had been fully prepared to meet his death; Matsui’s widow, having listened all night to the radio, voiced only relief.
Only Tojo’s family was less resigned. His second son told a reporter that his mother had gathered his children and told them, “From now on you are fatherless. But don’t think your father died. He shall still be living with us.” His lead defense lawyer, Kiyose Ichiro—who would become speaker of the lower house of the Diet—voiced defiance on his dead client’s behalf: “The question of whether the carrying out [of] this trial was right or wrong will be judged by future history.”
On the streets, the mood was calm. Older Japanese seemed sobered but did not want to talk to reporters. Younger people were indifferent. Indian diplomats reported that the hangings caused little excitement among the Japanese. “In Japanese eyes failure is the worst of crimes and Tojo himself had admitted that his only crime was that he failed in his mission,” wrote the Indian political representative in Tokyo. “No wonder therefore that the topranking leaders of militaristic Japan passed away unsung, unwept and almost unnoticed.”[27]
Japanese newspapers mostly editorialized that the seven hanged men had gotten what they deserved and merited no compassion, while adding that the nation should assume moral and spiritual responsibility for the war.[28] “They are now dead,” wrote the Mainichi Shimbun. “Let us pray for their souls as we do for all who have died. The best prayer would be one calling for the elimination of war and the establishment of peace throughout the world.” The hanged war criminals were not the only ones responsible for the war, the newspaper noted, warning that “ennobling the executed as having been sacrificed on behalf of the Japanese people affirms a wrongful war.” While doubting some of the law of the Tokyo trial and pointing to Radhabinod Pal’s dissent, the Mainichi concluded that “[t]he executions of Japan’s war leaders must become a symbol of the rejection of war for the entire world.”[29]
The liberal Asahi Shimbun, usually critical of the militarists, was the only major newspaper to suggest it was appropriate to offer condolences to the families. Its columnist was troubled: “we cannot help but feel a bitter jarring in our chests, like a rumbling in the earth.” But the writer quickly turned to praising pacifism, arguing that Japan could never defend itself in a future atomic war.[30]
Major Ben Bruce Blakeney, the American defense lawyer, was disgusted. He wrote to Bert Röling, “this morning brought the execution of the seven defendants, who, some say, were murdered by you and your colleagues.”[31]
Mei Ruao declared that the executions were a “source of satisfaction and comfort to those [who] suffered from Japanese aggression, particularly the Chinese who suffered the most.” Although admitting that thousands of Japanese war criminals had gotten away without punishment, he still saw the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials as establishing the important principles that aggression was an international crime and that those individuals who committed it should be held personally responsible. The hangings showed that aggression was not a “path to glory but a road to the gallows.”[32]
The day after the hangings, General Headquarters announced that the nineteen remaining Class A war crimes suspects were to be freed after being held in Sugamo Prison or under house arrest for up to three years and a few months. General Headquarters lawyers noted that the precedents set by the Tokyo court in acquitting some defendants on several counts would make it almost impossible to convict these remaining suspects for aggression. This, General Headquarters stated, marked the end of trials of major war criminals in Japan.[33]
The Chinese Communist Party, which had been pleased to see Tojo hang, was enraged.[34] “Many murderers who directly massacred Chinese people and culprits of the aggression against China were among the arbitrarily freed,” wrote the People’s Daily. “The blood of millions of Chinese victims during the war against Japan cannot go down the drain, and millions of widows and orphans must be avenged.”[35]
Not long ago, the United States had taken the lead in prosecuting over a thousand lower-level criminals, followed closely by Australia and Britain, and distantly trailed by China. The U.S. military commissions in Yokohama and Manila had handled high-profile cases such as a Japanese major general and colonel sentenced to death for the Bataan death march.[36] These courts were unforgiving: the U.S. and British trials convicted more than 90 percent of their defendants, while the Chinese courts found 75 percent guilty. The Americans executed 19 percent of their defendants and sentenced 21 percent to more than twenty-five years in jail—a rate topped only by China, which executed a quarter of its accused.
That was then. Now the Allies hoped to be entirely finished with these proceedings by the end of 1948. The British, who held trials in Hong Kong and Singapore, were the first to wrap up. The United States was starting to commute punishments, with the War Department exhorting General Headquarters to finish the lower-level war crimes trials by the end of the summer.[37] Under the Cold War policy pressed by George Kennan, the United States was wrapping up or undoing its purges—a prospect which alarmed MacArthur, who feared that Japanese extremists would in time take revenge on those Japanese who had worked with the American occupiers.[38]
MacArthur, never keen on war crimes trials, showed just how disenchanted he was with them in his first and only meeting with Harry Truman. In October 1950, the two men had an awkward encounter on Wake Island, with the president struggling to keep his commander under control during the Korean War. When asked about Korean war criminals, MacArthur replied sharply that he would try them swiftly with military commissions. “Don’t touch the war criminals,” he told Truman. “It doesn’t work. The Nurnberg trials and Tokyo trials were no deterrent.”[39]
As the Allies finalized a formal peace treaty to end the occupation, they understood that a sovereign Japanese government would soon face considerable agitation for parole or sweeping reductions of sentences for war criminals. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese signed petitions for clemency, while a mainstream Japanese magazine, complaining that the Tokyo verdict was “plainly a disregard of International Law,” urged springing the Class A war criminals from jail.[40] Led by the United States, the weary Allies adopted a conspicuous leniency on the war criminals—a predictable result of Kennan’s shift to building up Japan as a Cold War stronghold.[41]
The peace treaty, signed in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, went into force on April 28, 1952—restoring Japan as a sovereign country. Japan committed itself to the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the San Francisco treaty, Japan formally accepted the judgments of the Tokyo trial as well as other Allied war crimes courts, and committed to carry out the sentences on Japanese citizens. An independent Japan was still under some limitations: it could only grant clemency, reduce sentences, or parole imprisoned war criminals with the agreement of whichever Allied government imposed those sentences. For those convicted by the Tokyo trial, Japan could only reduce their jail terms if a majority of the eleven Allied governments agreed.[42]
General Headquarters turned over the task of imprisoning Japanese war criminals to the new Japanese government.[43] Truman created a parole board for hundreds of imprisoned Japanese who had been convicted by U.S. military commissions. Knowing that Japan’s new government would seek to free large numbers of them, the Truman administration wanted to settle the question on judicial grounds rather than political pressure. It was clear to everyone that the era of clemency had arrived.[44]
After the Tokyo trial, Edith Togo worked tirelessly for the release of her husband, Togo Shigenori, from prison.[45] She found an ally in Röling, who had voted to acquit him. “It is wonderful to think that there were some judges who had wisdom in their judgment,” she wrote to the Dutch judge. “I hope that someday the people of the world will come to an understanding for what my husband has done for them and thereafter restore his honor in the eyes of the world, which is more precious to him than anything else.”[46] She enterprisingly secured a letter from Princess Takamatsu, who had married one of Emperor Hirohito’s brothers, declaring Togo a diplomat dedicated to peace.[47]
Röling and Edith Togo joined forces with an odd coalition: Joseph Grew, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan; Lord Hankey, a posh British former cabinet secretary and member of Neville Chamberlain’s war cabinet who had written a book attacking war crimes trials for Germans and Japanese; and Blakeney, the defense lawyer.[48] Although they wanted to set free several convicted men, including Marquis Kido Koichi, Röling preferred to start with Shigemitsu Mamoru, who was hoping to return to public service and diplomacy.[49] He wrote to MacArthur urging parole for the former foreign minister.[50]
Shigemitsu was freed by a parole board in November 1950.[51] “I had read your ‘dissenting opinion’ well and admired so much your understanding of the case,” he wrote gratefully to Röling from his home in Kamakura. “As for the trial, I was rather glad that my whole work has come out substantially to the public through it, even under the hard judicial” scrutiny.[52] Röling hoped that he would soon return to making Japanese foreign policy.[53] Sure enough, after being de-purged, he returned to public life as a stalwart of conservative political parties. In 1954 he would again become Japan’s foreign minister.[54]
After the end of the occupation in 1952, a sovereign Japan moved speedily to release the remaining convicted Class A war criminals still in jail. Often their release was explained on grounds of ill health. This almost certainly was not the whole reason, but it was a convenient rationale for these old men, particularly for the first five who were set free; one former prime minister died in Sugamo Prison in 1950. Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro was paroled early in 1952; Field Marshal Hata Shunroku in 1954; and Kido, Kaya Okinori, and several others in 1955. In April 1958, Japan announced that the final ten surviving parolees were unconditionally released.[55]
Togo Shigenori had not been so lucky. In Sugamo Prison, he wasted away from heart disease, pernicious anemia, and bouts of gallbladder illness, while slowly going blind from cataracts.[56] “I genuinely hoped to construct an eternal peace of the world,” he wrote in a letter to his family. He worked on a memoir to record his own story. He consoled himself with Meiji-era classics and translated European books in Sugamo’s library, and with letters from his family. As he wrote to them, he wished that he could be a sparrow on the eaves of the family home in an upscale Tokyo neighborhood. He missed his wife, daughter, and young grandsons: “Receiving good letters from the children, I would sleep sound in a cold cement room.”[57]
Prince Takamatsu pressed for Togo’s release. Years later, Emperor Hirohito would praise him: “Foreign Minister Togo, his attitude was always the same, at the end of the war, and at the beginning of the war.”[58] In despair, Edith Togo urged Röling to get her “sick, meritorious husband” out of Sugamo Prison immediately. It was “unthinkable,” she wrote, that “the man who terminated the war should now go on to stay in prison for another 3 years.”[59]
Before dawn on July 23, 1950, she was jolted awake by the telephone call she had been dreading: her husband had died three minutes ago, alone in a prison hospital. She nearly committed suicide from grief. Later she wrote that “since that day I had lost my soul, my faith in God, my wish to live.”[60]