Latest / Generals of WWII: The Art of Command / Hideki Tojo: Japan's despised prime minster during WWII (with John Kuehn) | Ep 12

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Hideki Tojo: Japan's despised prime minster during WWII (with John Kuehn) | Ep 12 · Generals of WWII: The Art of Command

0:07
Welcome back to Generals of World War 2, the art of Command.
0:11
I'm your host, John Viscardo, and with me today is the great
0:15
John Kuhn. For those of you not familiar
0:17
with John, he's a tremendous guest.
0:19
We've had him on other podcasts. He's a professor of military
0:22
history at the US Army Command and General Staff College.
0:26
And before we get into our episode, I have a brief
0:29
disclaimer that John's going to read for us.
0:33
Yeah, the views are those of the author or the speaker in this
0:36
case and don't reflect the official policy or position of
0:39
the Department of the Navy, the Department of the Army or any of
0:42
the part of the federal government.
0:44
Got it. And today we're going to talk
0:47
about a guy, Hideki Tojo, the famous Japanese Prime Minister
0:50
during War Two. He was also a general.
0:53
And John knows a lot about this. He has two books kind of related
0:56
to this. One is A Military History of
0:59
Japan, which was an exhaustive study on all military histories
1:04
from the inception of Japan that I highly recommend.
1:07
And then the other book is called Strategy and Crisis, The
1:10
Pacific War, 1937 and 1945, and I'm guessing Tojo probably
1:15
appears in both books. Yeah, he's a he's a big player
1:21
in in both books, yeah. Thumbnail sketch of the guy.
1:25
Was he a a man? Just kind of overtaken by
1:29
circumstances or was he like a real ambitious fellow?
1:32
How did he kind of land in this position?
1:35
Well, this is a guy who kind of gets swept along by the tides of
1:39
history, to be honest. He's becomes the ruler of facto
1:43
ruler of Japan, even though Hirohito the emperor is is the
1:48
Djur ruler of Japan. And it, you know, it all happens
1:51
just sort of because of who his family is, how things get done
1:56
in Japan. And he becomes what my friend
2:00
Chris Johnson at the Army, at the command staff college calls.
2:04
He becomes the accidental dictator.
2:06
But he's not an ambitious, not ambitious in the way we think of
2:09
ambition. He'll go as high as he thinks
2:12
fate will take him because like most Japanese officers, he's
2:15
really kind of a Buddhist. So he's willing to go along with
2:19
whatever happens. But he's he doesn't seek supreme
2:22
power. He sounds like an interesting
2:23
guy. Let's kind of dive into his
2:26
background. Hideki Tojo was born December
2:28
1884 in Tokyo, Japan, into a family with a strong military
2:32
background. What were his early years like?
2:36
Well, he's he comes from a samurai line, so his father's
2:39
name is Tojo Hiddenore. Tojo.
2:42
Tojo is the family name. So you always say that first.
2:45
So Tojo Hidonori is his dad, and his dad was samurai.
2:48
But the Meiji Restoration came along and all of the samurai
2:53
clans were eliminated ostensibly in the reforms of the Meiji
2:57
Restoration. But his his line actually comes
3:00
from the famous Hosho line, which is really, really
3:03
important in Japanese history in the 14th and 15th and 16th
3:07
centuries. And they're finally obliterated
3:10
by the Tokugawa. And so, so he does kind of have
3:14
a, have a, have a lineage, but the family's kind of fallen on
3:17
hard times when the Meiji restoration comes along and his
3:20
father, you know, and the family basically becomes impoverished.
3:23
They lose their, their minuscule samurai pension that they get
3:27
from the shogunate. So his father goes to school and
3:30
becomes goes to a non commissioned officer school and
3:33
joins the new Imperial Army as a essentially as a Sergeant.
3:37
He helps put down the Satsuma Rebellion in the South in 1877.
3:42
And because of that, he gets promoted to a sub Lieutenant in
3:45
1878. And he goes to the war college.
3:48
He's in the first class of the Japanese Army War College.
3:51
So his dad becomes a Lieutenant General.
3:52
So he's the son of a general, but this is a guy who comes from
3:56
very, very humble roots and then goes all the way to three stars.
3:59
So really a rag's the richest thing.
4:01
But his father isn't anybody stellar either.
4:04
He just kind of there. He serves in both the Sino Russo
4:07
Japanese war serves with distinction, but but sort of
4:10
just sort of a do your duty and work hard.
4:12
And that's the family. The family is very ascetic.
4:15
So Tojo's upbringing is very ascetic.
4:19
You know, they're they're self-control, discipline, very
4:22
tight with money, very careful with money.
4:25
And he's the first son. So that's a big deal in Asian
4:28
culture. So he's the one that everybody's
4:31
going to put all the hopes for the family on.
4:33
He's got nine other siblings. So his mother, who's from
4:36
Kyushu, again, sort of your classic samurai mother, right?
4:40
You know, I have all these kids and then, you know, kind of hold
4:43
them to account. He is known for being sort of a
4:46
indolent, you know, a little bit kind of lazy initially and and
4:50
quarrelsome. He has a hair trigger temper.
4:54
But all of this gets under control because he goes to a
4:57
military training school, what we would call middle school, but
5:00
it's sort of like a military middle school.
5:02
And there his Japanese instructors and tutors kind of
5:06
turn him into this sort of quiet, modest, hard working guy.
5:10
But he's but the but his nickname will become the razor
5:13
because he's got this really incisive mind.
5:16
So he's he's sort of a born staff officer.
5:19
Yeah, he graduates from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy
5:22
19 O 5 and later Army War College, marking him as a
5:27
disciplined by the book officer. I mean, he touched on his
5:30
demeanor a little bit, but did he have any traits that would
5:33
kind of foreshadow him becoming a leader one day?
5:37
We normally think about military leadership like Napoleon and
5:40
combat and, and, and you know, the great combat leaders,
5:44
Alexander Caesar, Napoleon and, and Tojo is not from that that
5:49
ilk. He is the he is the staff
5:52
officer. And in Japan, where the Imperial
5:55
General Staff is a huge part of the Japanese polity, you know,
5:58
the head of the Imperial General Staff is essentially the Co
6:01
leader of the army. Tojo Tojo displays already sort
6:07
of the ideal traits for the general staff officer, which is
6:11
stay in the background, work quietly, work hard, though be
6:15
more than you appear. And Tojo is absolutely that.
6:17
He's everybody always underestimates him, but he's not
6:20
a grasping guy. But you know, when he gets
6:23
rewarded, he sees it as his due and the system rewards him.
6:26
He does get an accelerated career because of the Russo
6:29
Japanese war. He becomes an officer in half
6:33
the time it would normally take to become an officer.
6:35
And so, so he and all of his compatriots kind of of that
6:39
period, nineteen O 419 O 5, they are all in fast track because of
6:42
the war. They're losing so many officers.
6:44
They need officers. And so all of these guys kind of
6:47
get promoted in order to go to the war.
6:49
And then the war ends before any of them can get into combat.
6:52
And he's just a rising guy and he joins the Japanese Imperial
6:55
Army at a time when hard work and modesty are very, very much
7:00
valued. So he's off to a good start.
7:02
Yeah, yeah. Tojo served in Manchuria during
7:05
the interwar period, where he developed a reputation for
7:08
strict order efficiency and harsh discipline.
7:12
What is happening in China during this time?
7:14
China's huge. I mean, it's going to, it's
7:16
going to shape his entire career and it's going to shape how he
7:20
thinks about life. Again, the whole reason Japan is
7:24
in China is because of the Russians.
7:26
And Tojo is trained from the beginning to see his enemy as
7:31
the Russians. Later when they become the
7:33
Soviet Union, it's an easy switch for him.
7:36
He still sees his enemy as the Russians and the Communists in
7:39
the Soviet Union. The problem is China collapses.
7:43
The Qing dynasty becomes a failed state in 1911, and China
7:46
collapses into this, into this quasi Republic, which rapidly
7:50
becomes dominated by warlords. And for the next, from, you
7:53
know, from from 1911 to 1949, China's going to be at war
7:57
constantly. Somewhere in China there will be
8:00
large scale combat somewhere either between warlords, between
8:04
the Japanese and the warlords, between the communists and the
8:06
warlords. And it's just this just giant
8:09
mess inside China. And Japan during World War One
8:13
will issue something called the 21 Demands where it demands
8:17
essentially carte blanche inside China for extraterritoriality.
8:22
For all intents and purposes, southern, southern Manchuria
8:25
becomes Japanese dominated with the Kwantung Railroad, and the
8:29
Japanese will have an army inside Manchuria, the Kwantung
8:32
Army, and they'll be at odds with the local warlord in the
8:35
north, the old Marshall Chang. So Lin, an illiterate opium
8:40
addict, but he's the big warlord in the north that runs into the
8:43
Japanese. The Japanese will actually
8:45
assassinate him and his son will take over.
8:47
And so so Tojo is there in Manchuria.
8:49
He's seeing all this stuff happening.
8:52
Japan has all these problems with China that it needs to
8:54
resolve in order to sort of realize its greatness.
8:58
And Tojo gets bound up in this idea that Japan's future lies in
9:04
China as a not China in terms of political cultural domination,
9:09
but in terms of economic and industrial domination.
9:11
So there's these guys in Japan and they they're this, they
9:14
become a faction. And these army divides into two
9:17
factions after World War One and after the horrible catastrophe
9:21
in Siberia, the Japanese intervene into the Soviet, you
9:25
know, the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War and the
9:28
communists and, and the Reds kick their butts in Siberia,
9:32
chase them out of Siberia into Manchuria and all the way to to
9:36
Korea. And the Japanese army sort of
9:38
breaks into these two factions. 1 faction is a modernist faction
9:42
and that's the faction Tojo is in and they're really the
9:45
moderates. The other faction is these
9:46
extreme guys, more like the Nazis.
9:49
We're going to have this large conscript army that's going to
9:52
subdue all of Asia under Japanese domination.
9:55
And we'll rely on the Japanese spirit, not so much on modern
9:59
weapons and modern Western thinking.
10:01
But Tojo is not that guy. He, he's, he's very Western
10:05
oriented in terms of his thinking about warfare.
10:08
He's in the control faction. And these two factions hate each
10:10
other. They murder each other, they
10:12
assassinate each other. But the bone of contention
10:14
between them is this failed state in China.
10:16
Nobody ever knows who the Chinese government is.
10:19
And there really won't be a government of China until, you
10:22
know, Chiang Kai Shek comes to the fore.
10:24
And even he doesn't run most of China.
10:26
China's still very much under the warlords all the way until
10:30
World War 2 begins in 1937. Yeah, yeah.
10:33
Tojo becomes kind of a leading figure in this one militaristic
10:37
faction of the Japanese government during the 30s.
10:39
But now I want to kind of get up to World War 2 almost.
10:42
How involved was the Emperor of Japan in the lead up to war?
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And did Tojo have any kind of relationship with the Emperor at
10:49
this time? OK, so we got it.
10:51
We kind of got to go back. I talked to you about the
10:54
Control faction and there were a couple of guys in the Control
10:57
faction who are who are associates of Tojo and one of
11:00
them is his mentor and his mentor is this guy Colonel,
11:03
later General Inagaki. And Tojo sort of becomes the
11:07
Inagaki's mini me if you will. So, so wherever Inagaki goes,
11:12
you find Tojo. And the other guy is Ishiwara
11:14
Kanji, who's the nominal head of the control faction, even though
11:17
Tojo's senior to him. So they're taking matters into
11:21
their own hands. And the Emperor comes into power
11:24
and, and the army right away is pushing back on the Emperor's
11:27
power. They're assassinating people.
11:29
They assassinate this warlord in in 1928 when he doesn't do what
11:33
they want. And then the control faction are
11:36
the ones who invade Manchuria issue or a kanji kind of does
11:40
that. And Tojo kind of approves of
11:41
this post facto. He's not actively a part of it.
11:44
But you know, you have a Lieutenant Colonel who's behind
11:47
the invasion and seizure of the entirety of Manchuria,
11:50
Manchuria. And so Tojo is is promoted to
11:55
Major General at the time 19311932.
11:59
And that's when he becomes a general, and Itagaki invites him
12:02
to come to Manchuria as his second.
12:05
And Tojo is put in charge of the Kempa tie.
12:08
So he leads the military police contingent for General Inagaki.
12:12
And not only is he there sort of making sure that the officers
12:16
behave themselves and don't start any new wars with China,
12:19
because that's sort of the army's policy.
12:21
OK, we got Manchuria. We don't need any more warfare
12:24
with the Chinese right now. We need to consolidate our
12:26
gains. That's control.
12:28
The Imperial Way faction, on the other hand, is like, no, no more
12:30
war with China, seize more China, right?
12:33
And they try to seize Shanghai, and that fails actually in 1932.
12:37
But Tojo also uses the Kemputai to enforce security inside
12:43
Manchukwo, the tributary state. So he basically is running the
12:48
the secret police apparatus inside Manchuria, kind of
12:52
keeping the Chinese nationalists down and everything.
12:55
So the whole plan of he and Itagaki and Ishiwar is to sort
12:59
of turn Manchuria into Japan's rural valley, create this
13:02
industrial base on the mainland of Asia so that they can fight
13:06
the Russians and go go head to head with the Russians again.
13:09
Round three, if you will, they win round one, which is the
13:12
Russo Japanese war. Then they lose round 2IN Siberia
13:16
and now they want to fight round 3 in Mongolia and, and Tojo is
13:21
part of the guy who's kind of setting up the the system on on
13:25
the border of Manchuria and Mongolia for a future conflict
13:29
with the Russian proxies in Mongolia.
13:31
It's very, very complicated. These are all proxies, Soviet
13:35
proxies and Japanese Imperial Army proxies, and Hirohino's not
13:39
in charge of any of this. The, the, this is, this is the
13:43
army making policy all on its own without any approval from
13:46
the government or the Prime Minister.
13:48
The prime ministers are practically powerless during
13:51
this time period. And if they and if they oppose,
13:54
oppose the army, they get assassinated.
13:56
So after the London Naval Treaty, the Japanese, the Army's
13:59
furious at this treaty, that is agrees to further sort of
14:03
constrain the Japanese Navy, as are the young officers in the
14:06
Navy. They have their own problem with
14:08
the fleet faction and the treaty faction.
14:11
So in 1936, matters come to a head and the young officers of
14:15
the Imperial Way faction, Tojo's old infantry regiment, seized
14:19
power in Tokyo. And then the Emperor orders the
14:22
Imperial Guards to put down the rebellion.
14:24
And he actually, Hirohito kind of takes control from the army
14:30
and disciplines the army, but he essentially eliminates the
14:34
Imperial Way faction as the leading faction in the army.
14:37
And Taojo's faction, the control faction, become the de facto
14:42
heads of the army. But by this point, the army
14:45
culturally has become like the Imperial Way.
14:47
They the cultural attributes of the army, the brutality, then
14:51
never surrender. If you surrender, you have
14:53
you're, you're, you've dishonored yourself.
14:55
Prisoners have dishonored themselves.
14:57
All the things we think about the Japanese Army in World War 2
15:00
are firmly established inside the Army.
15:02
But the moderates under Tojo in terms of policy take control.
15:06
But they have a hard time keeping the army under control.
15:09
And in 1937, even though the control faction with Tojo, who
15:14
eventually soon be the vice chief of the army ministry under
15:17
Itagaki, who becomes the war minister, they the an
15:20
insubordinate officer named Major Ichiki basically at the
15:24
Marco Polo Bridge north of Beijing starts World War 2 with
15:28
the with the nationalists And it just, it just goes down the
15:31
slippery slope, sort of the accidental war leads to the
15:35
accidental dictator. Yeah, it's funny how it kind of
15:39
it starts on the Marco Polo Bridge, like you said.
15:42
And Tojo, though, in 1940 becomes Minister of War.
15:47
And I wanted to ask you about the Japanese wartime economy
15:50
here. Did they ever?
15:52
Was there rationing? Was there a move towards a
15:54
wartime economy, more industrial output towards war materials?
15:58
Was that the case in Japan? I remember in 1937 when World
16:03
War 2 begins in China, which is really where we should start
16:06
World War 2, and Tojo is not in command, in combat.
16:09
He's in the Imperial General Staff and then he goes to the
16:11
War Ministry. So he's a policy guy.
16:13
He's not doing operations, but Japan.
16:17
Japan begins to become under pressure from the United States.
16:21
United States cancels its most favored nation trading policy.
16:24
the United States begins financial sanctions against
16:28
Japan, limits Japan's credit, and then it all comes into a
16:31
head in 1940 when when the United States institutes limited
16:36
sanctions. So Japan's economy starts to
16:39
suffer from U.S. sanctions, particularly in the summer of
16:42
1940 when Japan moves into northern China.
16:45
So this is the background for Tojo becoming the war minister.
16:49
Up until this point, the government's been under Prince
16:51
Kanoya, who's a who's part of the royal family and it's a
16:54
unity government, but it's it's it's job is to essentially turn
16:59
China into a puppet state of Japan.
17:01
But the Chinese won't surrender. The communists keep fighting,
17:04
although they're not really a big factor, but the nationalists
17:07
are still fighting, and they're supported by the United States.
17:11
And when the United States institute Lend Lease, the Chiang
17:14
Kai Shek gets extended Lend Lease, this is not a declared
17:17
war. The Japanese, in order to
17:18
continue to get U.S. oil and US scrap metal and aviation
17:22
gasoline, don't call it a war. So under the Neutrality Act,
17:25
they can buy things, but when the United States limits their
17:28
credit, they can't. They can't.
17:29
They're starting to have a problem buying things and
17:32
they're getting 75% of their oil, most of their scrap metal
17:35
and iron from the United States and almost all their aviation
17:38
gasoline there. So because their their ability
17:41
to refine aviation gasoline is extremely limited, they want to
17:44
build all this. So up until this point, Tojo and
17:47
the Minister of war in Agaki, he's the vice minister of war,
17:50
have been very, very much supportive of what they call the
17:52
Northern strategy, which is we'll go north, we'll get our
17:55
resources against the Soviet Union.
17:59
And in the winter of 19391940 that, that the, that leads to
18:05
conflict with the Soviets and the Japanese are humiliated.
18:08
They're, they're supposedly built up this modern army with
18:12
artillery and tanks and aircraft and everything.
18:14
And the Soviets under Georgie Zukov, Marshall Zukov, just
18:19
annihilate the equivalent of a core minus at around Domanon.
18:24
The Japanese go on the offensive first they're defeated and then
18:26
they're on the defensive and the Soviets surround them and
18:29
annihilate them. And this is this is a huge
18:32
humiliation. And then Conoya can't, can't get
18:35
the Americans to agree to sort of let China go.
18:38
And the Americans keep saying, well, you know, we need to talk
18:41
about you getting out of China. And they refuse.
18:43
If they just say, well, no, we, they kind of string the
18:46
Americans along and the Conoya government falls.
18:48
So at this point, because Tojo's in favor of the alliance with
18:53
Germany, the Axis alliance, the Trypartite Pact, after France
18:57
falls, he becomes the war minister because he supports the
19:00
Axis alliance and he he says this is the way forward.
19:04
Here's how Japan can achieve its goals.
19:06
But it's really a collective decision by the control faction
19:09
and, and Itagaki and all the different guys in charge of the
19:12
Japanese army. But the Japanese army is really
19:15
running the show, and Hirohiro's unhappy with Kanoya and, and so
19:21
so Tojo becomes the war minister right at this point in time.
19:26
And this is when he switches to the Southern Strategy, which the
19:29
Navy has been arguing for. Let's go to the South.
19:32
Japan doesn't have the resources to fight a Total War.
19:35
So what they need is the resources.
19:37
They were going to get them from the Soviets.
19:39
Now they're going to turn to the South because the Americans are
19:42
no longer supporting them with raw materials and so they invade
19:47
northern Indochina and that brings on the 1st crippling
19:50
American sanctions and and that'll lead to the fall of the
19:53
Canoya government and open the door for Tojo.
19:57
So October 18, 1941, Tojo's appointed Prime Minister of
20:02
Japan while retained the post of war minister, but you can't
20:05
touch on it earlier. This is a dangerous position in
20:08
Japan during this time. Can you tell us about the
20:10
previous Prime Minister assassinations and attempted
20:14
assassinations? Yeah, so, so there had been I
20:18
think at least three prime ministers assassinated.
20:22
Now the first one is assassinated in the 20s and
20:25
that's Tanaka. And that ends the so-called
20:27
period of Taisho democracy. But in the, in 1932, another
20:32
Prime Minister is assassinated. And then again in 1936, the
20:36
young officers assassinate a whole bunch of other figures.
20:40
I don't know if they assassinate the Prime Minister, but they
20:42
assassinate the keeper of the Privy seal, Admiral Saito
20:45
Makaito. And, and he's a treaty faction
20:48
Admiral. So, so he's sort of like one of
20:50
the most important people in the government because he, he's the
20:53
guy who goes between Hirohito and the government.
20:56
And you got to remember that the war minister is a member of the
20:59
cabinet. And so Hirohito joins the the
21:01
cabinet in 1914. So anybody in the cabinet can
21:04
become the Prime Minister and he keeps the war ministry
21:08
portfolio. But remember, he's moderate.
21:10
There's officers that don't like him, that don't like the control
21:12
fact. So this is kind of a dangerous
21:15
job to take. I mean, this is when he
21:16
accidentally sort of becomes the Prime Minister because when can
21:19
when the Canoya government falls, remember you have to go
21:22
to the emperor to create a new government, kind of like in
21:24
Great Britain, right? So the keeper of the Privy seal
21:28
is now a guy named Marquis Quito.
21:30
Quito is friends with Tojo, but he also sort of blames the army
21:35
for all Japan's misfortunes. So he says, I'm going to get the
21:38
army to fix this, right? So I'm going to go to this
21:41
preeminent bureaucratic sort of deal maker, Tojo.
21:45
And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to have the emperor
21:48
make him the emperor, the Prime Minister.
21:50
Tojo does not want to be the Prime Minister.
21:53
This is like the worst job in Japan.
21:55
Nobody wants this job. The only reason Kanoye was able
21:59
to hold on to it and keep from being assassinated is because
22:01
he's from the royal family. So this might be a death
22:04
sentence for Tojo and he can't turn it down.
22:07
If the emperor asked you to become the Prime Minister, you
22:10
have to be the Prime Minister. But this puts this all facades
22:14
that the military isn't in charge of the Japanese
22:16
government. Go away.
22:17
Tojo is now holding two of the most important portfolios in the
22:21
cabinet, and he essentially becomes the supreme leader
22:25
underneath the Emperor. But he doesn't want the job, so
22:29
now he's in charge. Now, Now, what do you do right?
22:32
Well, that's what I was going to ask you.
22:33
You know, he's Prime Minister now and he overseas the decision
22:37
to go to war against the United States and the Allies, including
22:39
the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
22:43
So my question is, was this his decision or was he pressured
22:48
into war by the war Hawks in the Japanese government?
22:52
So once he makes the southern decision for the Southern
22:55
strategy, which he's he once he becomes Prime Minister, he, he's
23:00
already switched to the Southern strategy, makes a famous speech,
23:03
I think in 1938 where he he says, yeah, we're going to have
23:07
to, we're going to have to kind of realize our destiny and
23:10
everything. Up until this point, he hasn't
23:12
made too much. Nobody really knows where he
23:14
stands on these things. And then as when he's the vice
23:17
war minister, he kind of comes out and says, I kind of support
23:20
Japan's path to greatness and to dominating Asian.
23:23
We're going to liberate all these Asian nations from these
23:26
colonial powers. So, so that's always in the
23:29
cards to kind of do that. But with the fall of France, the
23:33
militarists inside the Japanese polity, both in the Navy, in the
23:38
in the fleet faction and in the army, see, OK, well, this is our
23:41
chance and we're going to go South.
23:43
We'll, we'll, we'll seize northern into China.
23:46
That will help us cut off Lend Lease to the Chinese.
23:50
Eventually we're going to have to close down Hong Kong and shut
23:52
off Lend Lease going through Hong Kong to Shanghai Shaq's
23:56
armies. So this is all the strategy to
23:58
win the war is to cut off all the American aid that's keeping
24:03
China in the war. The American aid isn't that
24:05
significant, but it's keeping Chiang Kai Shek from
24:09
surrendering. So can't Chiang Kai Shek keeps
24:11
pulling back? In fact, Tojo says, you know
24:13
what? We just need to create a new
24:15
government of China. That's a puppet government.
24:17
They'll do that, but it's never popular or effective.
24:20
It doesn't control anywhere outside where they're Japanese
24:23
soldiers. So, so, so Tojo says, well,
24:26
we've got to just convince Chiang Kai Shek to kind of throw
24:28
in the towel. But at the same time, in doing
24:31
this, he antagonizes the United States.
24:34
So that's the strategy to win the war is to get China to throw
24:37
in the towel, right? And, and it's really kind of a
24:40
hopeless strategy. He almost adopts the strategy as
24:44
it all kind of happens. Like nobody wants to go this
24:48
route, but they can't see any way to go without Japan losing
24:52
face and being humiliated and for the army to be humiliated.
24:56
So when the Navy comes up with this crazy plan to attack the
25:00
United States in order to seize the resources, they're going to
25:04
attack the Dutch, the British and take what they want from the
25:07
French and the Thais, the Thailand government.
25:11
That's already in the cards for this plan.
25:13
But when the Navy says, listen, in order to do this, we need to
25:15
eliminate the ability United States to interfere, Tojo says,
25:19
OK, you, you guys in the Navy know what you're doing.
25:22
Go ahead and attack the United States.
25:24
And, and he agrees. You can't, you can't seize the
25:28
southern resource area and leave the Philippines in place across
25:31
Japan's sea lines of communications.
25:33
And Navy says you can. And Tojo agrees with that.
25:35
So he he kind of, you know, he kind of gives the Navy carte
25:40
blanche to kind of do what it sees to fit.
25:43
But this is a huge decision that's almost made casually
25:45
like, yeah, I guess we got to attack the United States and
25:47
we'll attack the United States. It all comes ahead in 19 in the
25:50
summer of 1941, when when Japan occupies southern Indochina and,
25:58
and, and the United States cuts off all Japan's oil.
26:02
Now Japan's on the clock. She's only got 18 months of oil
26:04
reserves to fight the war. So she's got to seize all the
26:07
reserves. So let me review the strategy
26:10
here. The strategy is we need all the
26:12
reserves to fight a war, to force China to surrender, right?
26:16
So the way to win the war against China is declare war on
26:19
the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
26:22
Bad idea so. That's what Japan does.
26:25
Yeah, we talked strategy. I do want to talk a little bit
26:28
of the history of Japan, just since you wrote a book on the
26:31
military history of Japan. Tojo was not a dictator in the
26:35
Western sense, but still operated within Japan's imperial
26:39
system under Emperor Hirohito. When did the Emperor become more
26:43
of a figurehead, kind of like he was at this point?
26:45
So this begins with the Meiji Restoration.
26:48
So the Meiji oligarchs created the Japanese polity in the 1860s
26:53
to replace the Shoguns right who had ruled Japan as a military
26:57
dictatorship. So Japan's normal government
27:00
from like, you know, the Norman Conquest until 1945 is military
27:08
dictatorship. It's the form of government
27:10
that's ruled Japan for most of its history over the last
27:14
Millennium. OK, so so but the mage oligarchs
27:18
want something better than that. They replace the military
27:21
dictatorship with constitutional monarchy, but it's an imperial
27:25
monarchy more on the German model than on the British model.
27:29
And the emperor is not really, He's more a figurehead.
27:33
But the idea is who's going to run the government is going to
27:36
be a cabinet ministry led by a Prime Minister with political
27:39
parties. When this system starts to take
27:42
Japan's army's privileged place in the imperial RE script away
27:46
from the army, the army rebels against it, and they essentially
27:51
do away with imperial constitutional monarchy and
27:54
subvert the cabinet prime ministerial system.
27:57
So in 1937, when the war begins, they create this thing called
28:01
the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War.
28:04
And essentially only the uniformed military officers on
28:08
the cabinet and the Imperial Naval General Staff head, who's
28:13
Admiral Nagano and the Imperial Army General Staff, who it's not
28:18
a NAMI yet, but it's, it's, it's somebody who's buddies with
28:21
Tojo. They become part of that.
28:24
And so, so the guys running Japan in 1941 are the Imperial
28:29
Council for the direction of the war.
28:31
And Tojo holds like 3 of the, he ends up holding most of the
28:35
portfolios in the cabinet. So he essentially becomes,
28:39
because of this screwed up system, he becomes the de facto
28:43
dictator. He doesn't want to, I mean, he
28:46
all, he didn't want to be Prime Minister.
28:48
He didn't want to be the army minister, to be honest with you.
28:51
So he sort of becomes the guy. But once he does, he typical
28:54
Japanese samurai, OK, I'm going to do my duty to the emperor.
28:57
But the emperor's power is very, very limited.
28:59
And the emperor kind of, they come to him with these crazy
29:02
decisions and the emperor only has two responses he can make,
29:05
yes, do it or no, come to back to me with another decision.
29:09
So what you get stuck with is this, they kind of keep doing
29:12
what they doing until they come up with an idea that the emperor
29:15
approves. But the emperor, you know, he
29:17
only he's kind of command by negation, you know, no, I don't
29:21
like that. Well, if the emperor doesn't
29:22
like their solution, they just kind of keep doing what they're
29:25
doing. And which in 1941 is fighting a
29:27
war in China. Yeah, and things start off well.
29:30
Japan has some early wartime successes, but that's followed
29:34
by major defeats and by 1944 military setbacks severely
29:39
weakened Tojo's position. So I guess 2 questions.
29:42
Why did your fans start to lose the war?
29:44
And why does Tojo get all the blame it sounds like?
29:49
We give him all the blame. So let's talk about the
29:51
Americans for a second year. Americans like to personalize
29:54
their enemies, right? You know, You know, Tojo was
29:57
Hitler, Tojo was Mussolini. You know, you know, not
30:00
Hirohito. Hirohito doesn't fit the mold.
30:03
He's this quiet, young marine biologist who?
30:06
Who? Yeah, he'll dress up in a
30:08
uniform and he'll he'll let himself be used for propaganda
30:11
purposes. But he didn't.
30:12
He himself is worried about being replaced by his brother.
30:16
So he can be replaced, too. Emperors.
30:18
Emperors can be sidelined as well.
30:21
His predecessor had sort of been sidelined.
30:24
And Hiro, you know, knows in the past, emperors have been fired.
30:27
They've been exiled. Assassinating emperors isn't
30:31
isn't really done. But he can be replaced by his
30:34
brother. So he's worried about that.
30:37
So he kind of goes along to get along.
30:38
But, but Tojo, Tojo's, you know, Americans like to think of
30:42
Tojo's a dictator, but he is sort of running.
30:45
He's the guy at the top of this pyramid, but the pyramid is
30:48
flat. It's all these collective
30:50
leaders in the army, in the Navy, who are running things
30:53
with the emperor just kind of nodding.
30:55
You guys, could you please make this stop?
30:59
But then the emperor's a God like figures, so you can't
31:01
really blame the God, can you? You have to blame the the
31:04
minister and the government. Right.
31:06
So in Japanese culture, the failures all belong to who's
31:10
ever in charge of the army and the Navy.
31:13
The army and the Navy have failed the emperor, and that's
31:16
why all these guys are committing suicide, you know,
31:18
because they failed the emperor. The emperor's unhappy with them.
31:21
But Tojo's in charge from 41 to 44 initially.
31:24
The Southern Resource strategy works, Pearl Harbor works.
31:27
They get to seize the resources. Unfortunately for them, though,
31:32
the only way to get all the resources to Japan or to
31:35
Manchuria, where they're trying to develop an industrial base is
31:38
via the ocean, via shipping. They have a, they have the third
31:43
or either the second or the third largest merchant marine in
31:47
the world. And when they, when the war,
31:48
when the war expands in 1941, they seize another million or so
31:53
tons of shipping. So they have over 7 million tons
31:56
of shipping. The shipping is owned by the
31:58
Japanese government, by the Japanese state.
32:01
They wear uniforms. They're not merchant marine or
32:04
corporately owned. They're they really belong to
32:06
the Japanese state. But the problem is the Navy.
32:09
The Navy says we're going to protect, you know, the sea lines
32:12
of communications so that we can fight this war in China and hold
32:15
the Americans off. So it's a 2 edged strategy.
32:17
One, win the war in China, 2 hold off the Americans at sea.
32:21
And for six months that kind of works until it doesn't.
32:26
And then the Navy, then the Army's like, well, Navy, you
32:28
lied to us. You told us you could hold the
32:30
Americans off. You said you'd be the barrier.
32:33
And look, you know, you're not doing a very and the Navy lies
32:36
to the Army about what happens at Midway.
32:38
Then the Navy says, oh, don't worry about Guadalcanal, we got
32:41
it all under control down here. And then all of a sudden the
32:44
Navy is asking the Army, hey, could you lend us some pilots
32:47
and some airplanes and everything?
32:49
Because we're like running out of airplanes down here and we're
32:52
sort of running out of ships. And the United States isn't
32:55
going away. And they're just like, what are
32:57
you doing? And they, so they start to draw
32:59
these lines, you know, must hold line.
33:02
So they have the Supreme Council with the direction of the war as
33:04
these must hold lines. And they talk about them in
33:07
their, all the signals intelligence that we're reading
33:09
so well. No, the Japanese will say, well,
33:12
this is no longer behind the must hold line.
33:13
So we don't care if the Americans take it.
33:15
And they start to move this thing back, and it moves all the
33:19
way back until it gets to the Marianas Islands, which are
33:23
Japanese, at least the Northern Marianas are Japanese, part of
33:27
the war. And so now it's must hold.
33:30
And so Tojo stakes all of his political capital on holding the
33:33
Marianas. And the Navy, of course, tells
33:35
him, don't worry, This is going to be the big decisive battle.
33:38
We'll take care of you and we'll defeat the US Navy once and for
33:41
all. And of course, they get the big
33:43
decisive battle. The Japanese Navy is defeated
33:46
once and for all, although Lady is still to come.
33:48
But but the Japanese Navy is really broken at the Philippine
33:53
Sea and and Saipan in the sacred soil of Japan in Saipan and
33:58
Tinian and Rhoda falls and Tojo offers his resignation to the
34:03
Emperor and the emperor acceptance after after June July
34:07
of 1944, Tojo's no longer in. Charge.
34:10
Yeah, I want to talk to you about that.
34:12
He resigns as Prime Minister July 1944 at the loss of Saipan,
34:16
which exposed Japan to direct American attack.
34:19
So what is Tojo doing for the remainder of the war?
34:22
Well, he's, he's still part of the government.
34:25
It's, it's really odd. He's not the army minister
34:28
anymore. He loses that portfolio to
34:30
General Anami, who's one of his allies, by the way.
34:33
So you fire Tojo, but you don't really change the policy.
34:37
The policy is still, although the Japanese are beginning to
34:40
coalesce around the idea of no occupation of Japan and
34:44
retention of the emperor, but they still refuse to talk
34:48
through their through their agents.
34:50
They work through the Soviet Union to kind of let let
34:53
everybody know what they're willing to accept, but they're
34:55
still refused to sort of talk about China all the way until
34:59
the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese refused to discuss
35:02
China and the Potsdam Declaration is in July of 1945.
35:06
By the time we get to 1945, Tojo's essentially in semi
35:10
retirement. He's still one of the Gen. ro.
35:12
He's part of the board of of a retired generals and Admirals.
35:17
That's also part of the Japanese polity, but he's not really
35:20
making any decisions at all. They're all being made by Prime
35:24
Minister Suzuki, who's an Admiral and General Anami and
35:28
Tojo's really just kind of sitting around for the war,
35:31
waiting for the war to end. Yeah, After Japan surrender in
35:35
1945, Tojo attempted suicide but survived and was arrested by US
35:40
occupation forces. How does he attempt suicide?
35:44
OK, so once the Emperor accepts the Potsdam declaration, he
35:48
doesn't use the word surrender. So now the Emperor does take
35:53
control. What eventually happens is the
35:55
Emperor says I've had enough, I'm taking control, I'm going to
35:57
accept the Potsdam and there's a coup against him, which again
36:01
the Imperial Guards put down. It's by the Imperial Guards, but
36:04
it's put down by the Imperial Guards, and the Emperor accepts
36:07
the Potsdam Declaration. And all of a sudden, the
36:10
Japanese, in this incredible turn, they turn on a dime and
36:15
help the Americans bring them into Tokyo Bay with pilots.
36:19
MacArthur lands it at Sugi. You know, the Japanese could
36:22
have assassinated him easily. And so all of a sudden, American
36:27
military police are looking for Tojo because the Americans have
36:30
turned Tojo into Hitler. So the first thing they got to
36:33
do is grab Tojo. So they show up at his house and
36:36
he leans out the wind and he goes, hey guys, let me pack.
36:39
And they go, OK, we'll wait. And he goes in the back room and
36:42
he shoots himself in the heart. That where he thinks he shoots
36:45
himself in the heart. He actually misses all the major
36:48
things that probably could have killed him.
36:50
But he is bleeding badly. So they break down the door,
36:53
they go back and he's bleeding to death.
36:56
And the Japanese doctor gets there and he's like, he's done,
36:59
he's going to die. You know, better for everybody
37:01
than he just dies. Not the Americans.
37:04
They, they rush and they find an American army doctor.
37:07
And he, he comes in, he's like, well, I guess I'm a doctor.
37:10
I guess I got to save this guy. And he saves Tojo's life so that
37:13
he can be tried as a war criminal.
37:15
Absolutely amazing. Yeah, well, you read all these
37:18
stories about Japanese officers committing Harry Carey, and then
37:20
this guy shoots himself and can't do it.
37:23
Yeah. No, no, because remember, he's
37:25
not really a combat veteran. I don't know if any he'd ever
37:29
anybody had ever fired a shot in anger.
37:31
Yeah, he is tried by the International Military Tribunal
37:37
for for the Far East and convicted of war crimes.
37:41
Which ones are he is he convicted on?
37:43
Because there's a lot to choose from.
37:44
There's treatment of Chinese civilians, treatment of allied
37:46
PO WS. There are all of these charges
37:50
that are sort of collective charges against Japanese
37:52
officers and Japanese figures running the war.
37:56
So he was tried mostly for actions taken after 1937 in
37:59
China because he's part of the government, vice minister of war
38:03
and and minister, minister of war.
38:06
And so he's the initial charges planning for a war of aggression
38:10
against the Soviet Union. OK, that's one of the charges
38:15
because they've got the they've got all the evidence.
38:17
Remember he, he really wanted to fight the commies, right?
38:20
In fact, that was part of the Japanese plan was, hey, we're
38:23
anti communists. And then as Prime Minister for
38:26
planning and executing a war of aggression against the colonial
38:29
powers, Great Britain and the Dutch.
38:31
And of course against the democracy of the United States,
38:34
but also against China, which is a democracy.
38:37
So war of aggression against China, USUK and the Netherlands.
38:41
And then for rejecting legitimate peace overtures.
38:44
He's also tried on that charge. And then all the general charges
38:49
of, of, of war crimes against Chinese civilians, against
38:53
Allied PO WS, like those are all, they're all still
38:57
applicable too. But what he's really being tried
39:00
for is being the guy in charge when the Japanese decide to
39:03
attack Pearl Harbor. We need a scapegoat for Pearl
39:07
Harbor. All the other guys are dead.
39:10
You know, Yamamoto's, you know, Yamamoto's dead.
39:13
We executed him in 1943P38 and Yugaki is dead.
39:19
Anami commits suicide. So Tojo's kind of the only one
39:23
left to kind of try. Kind of like at Nuremberg, we
39:25
got hit, you know, we got Goering.
39:27
So we'll, he's the guy we'll try.
39:29
There is one other guy they could have tried, but Hideki
39:31
Tojo was executed by hanging on December 23rd, 1948, becoming
39:36
one of the most prominent figures responsible for Japan's
39:39
wartime actions. Why was Tojo the focus?
39:43
I mean, you touched on there, but why was the Emperor spared
39:47
any prosecution? Yeah, So these questions really
39:50
go together. Let's talk about the hanging
39:52
though. He's he's very the way he
39:55
behaves. You know, he's always known for
39:57
his righteous rectitude, his that he behaves in the proper
40:02
fashion. All the guys are going to be
40:03
executed with him. He's their spokesman.
40:05
He has we all need a last meal. We all need to be with Buddhist
40:08
priests. He makes sure that everybody
40:11
does everything right and he sort of accepts his punishment
40:14
gracefully. It's it's really a fascinating.
40:16
Story, you know how he's not screaming epithets and saying we
40:20
were right, You were, you know, he's like, yeah, you guys won,
40:22
we lost. But he takes care of his fellow
40:25
prisoners all the way up to the end.
40:26
It's his his efforts in behalf of the other people that are
40:28
going to be executed or they're they're like, man, you know,
40:32
this guy is so complicated. I don't understand him.
40:35
But again, yeah, he's the guy that's going to take the fall.
40:38
Now the emperor, that has to do with MacArthur and especially
40:43
General Bonner fellers when when MacArthur gets there, the the
40:47
Allies haven't made a deal to keep the emperor.
40:49
They could still depose the emperor and replace him
40:51
completely. But General Feller says, listen,
40:55
you know, if we replace the emperor, we might have this
40:59
gigantic counterinsurgency operation on our hands.
41:02
Most of the Japanese armies are still in the field, right?
41:07
They haven't surrendered or been completely processed.
41:11
They're starting to surrender, but nobody's really sure if
41:14
they're going to continue to surrender.
41:15
If we depose the emperor and fellers is like, whatever we do,
41:19
we don't want to depose the emperor right away.
41:20
Let's wait till we get all the armies surrendered.
41:23
The more MacArthur thinks about it and the more fellers and his
41:26
compatriots think about, it's like, now we leave the emperor
41:29
in place, we can we can sort of keep things together here while
41:33
we sort of rebuild Japanese democracy from the ground up.
41:37
And, you know, the emperor is the guy who surrendered.
41:40
He's the one who made the decision, right?
41:42
Kind of like Dernitz. Dernitz surrenders.
41:44
Is Dernitz executed? New?
41:46
No. Left in charge of the
41:48
government. No.
41:49
No. He's tried as a war criminal.
41:51
But you're right, you need that peacetime transition, and the
41:53
Emperor helps with that. Yeah, so, So most scholars agree
41:57
it's the correct decision a lot. And most, most political
42:00
historians, diplomatic historians and even political
42:03
scientists agree. Yeah.
42:04
Leaving Hirohito in place was not only magnanimous, not trying
42:09
him and executing as a war criminal, it was probably a good
42:11
decision. But leaving him there for the
42:14
next, what, 40 years was bad. The imperial institution was a
42:19
part of this whole thing and not punishing Hirohito.
42:22
His powers, such as they are, are very much scaled back after
42:27
the war. As emperor, he really has no
42:29
political power at all, just becomes sort of a he becomes
42:33
like the British monarchy, sort of this figurehead.
42:36
Well, it's interesting to me when studying for this episode
42:39
that Japan had far more prosecutions of war crimes at
42:42
all levels, while the Nuremberg prosecution mostly focused at
42:45
the top levels of the Nazi regime.
42:49
So it seems like in Germany they were just going after the bad
42:51
apples on top. In Japan, they're kind of going
42:54
after all levels. Yeah, they, the Americans really
42:58
felt like Japan was the guilty party here more than Germany, to
43:03
be honest. OK.
43:04
Although, you know, the stories are starting to come back from
43:06
Germany about how horrible Germany was.
43:08
Japan's actually responsible for more civilians death than the
43:11
Nazis are. I mean, from 1937 and 1945,
43:15
they, they're just killing, starving, mismanaged.
43:19
And it's not just in China, it's all over Asia. 10s of millions
43:22
of Asians die because of what the Japanese and Tojo and his
43:27
ilk and the militarists are doing in Japan.
43:29
So in some sense the United States has right to be more
43:32
broad. But the great irony here is in
43:35
kind of front loading the prosecutions and then basically
43:38
saying, OK, that's it. We're not going to do any more
43:40
of this. We sort of let Japan off the
43:42
hook. And so the great irony of the
43:44
war with Japan is, is the Japanese people never really
43:48
come to grips. And the Japanese themselves have
43:52
had an exciting debate over this, about how they teach the
43:55
history of the war. And in the 60s and 70s, there
43:58
was this huge, huge deal historian named Ianagi wrote
44:03
about the Pacific war and saying, hey, this was a horrible
44:06
war and we were guilty. And Japanese people kind of
44:09
supported this. And we all need to accept the
44:12
collective guilt. And, and we've seen it in, in,
44:14
in the past 30-40 years, you know, as, as right wing prime
44:17
ministers have gone to Yasukuni, there have been protests in
44:21
Japan against it, never mind in Korea and China, which are the
44:24
are, you know, in the Philippines for that matter.
44:27
Every nation in Asia that was touched by Japan should, should
44:31
post a protest whenever a Prime Minister goes to Yasukuni so
44:34
that they're right. So, so you know, and, and and
44:38
and it becomes all there, all this big issue in Japan after
44:42
the war, how they teach the war and they're still struggling
44:45
coming to grips, you know, was this just a couple people or was
44:49
it the whole nation? Yeah.
44:50
My final question though is, is Tojo's legacy, because you
44:53
wonder, like you said, it was thrust upon him.
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So would a different Prime Minister have done anything
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differently? I don't know but Tojo is the one
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in the spot they made their decisions.
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It leads to pretty much economic and total ruin of the country.
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So to I can't find a real positive legacy for him.
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But I don't know what's your thought on Tojo?
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It's not a positive legacy. I I agree.
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You know, he's the accidental dictator.
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He didn't want to be the guy in charge, but you know, when the
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key decisions are made, he is the guy in charge nominally,
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although he's he's, it's really him in a cast of hundreds at the
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top, particularly the officer corps in both the Navy and the
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Army. So yeah, yeah, he deserved the
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punishment he received. He was.
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His legacy is unequal to the task.
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But then again, very few people in Japan were equal to the task.
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The legacy for the modern day Japan is the Army is definitely
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the branch that tries to stay in the background.
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In Japan. The Army's service in the war is
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regarded as humiliating and shameful.
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And so the Japanese grounded self-defense forces have always
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sort of had a hard, hard task of sort of making a case for.
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So they completely reject their legacy from the war and they're
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trying to develop. I'm working with the Japanese
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commander General Staff College right now and they're actually
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trying to create a different sort of narrative from the one
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that Tojo and his legacy left. But the said.
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But the Navy on the other hand, it's service in the wars is
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still mostly regarded as honorable.
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They still call the Navy the Fleet Air Force.
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It's still the Kai gun. The Army is not the Ko gun, but
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the Navy is the Kai gun, the Imperial Navy, they still call
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it that. The army is not the Imperial
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Navy. It's very much like the British,
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you know, because of the English Civil War.
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The Royal Navy doesn't revolt against the King.
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So the Royal Navy is the Royal Navy gets to be the King's Navy.
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The Royal Army loses that, right?
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It's not the King's Army, it's the British Army now, and so did
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the Japanese Army is very much where the British Army was 300
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years ago. Interesting.
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And that's Tojo's legacy. Very interesting.
47:07
All right, well, thank you for that, my friend.
47:09
That was amazing. I learned a lot on Hideki Tojo.
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Again, if you want to learn more about John, a lot of great books
47:15
on Amazon, his World War 2 in particular, A Military History
47:19
of Japan is one book, and the other one is Strategy and
47:22
Crisis, The Pacific War, 1937 to 1945.
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John, we thank you for your time, my friend.
47:29
John, glad to do it. Thanks for having me.
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My pleasure. Thank you, Sir.