A newly released memo by a wartime Japanese official provides what a historian said is the first look at the thinking of Japanese Emperor Hirohito and then-Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that thrust the US into World War II.
While far from conclusive, the five-page document lends credence to the view that Hirohito bears at least some responsibility for starting the war.
At 8:30pm in Tokyo, just hours before the attack, Tojo summoned two top aides for a countdown to war briefing. One of them, then-Japanese vice minister of the interior Michio Yuzawa, wrote an account three hours after the meeting was over.
Photo: AP
“The emperor seemed at ease and unshakable once he had made a decision,” he quoted Tojo as saying.
To what extent Hirohito was responsible for the war is a sensitive topic in Japan and the bookseller who discovered the memo kept it under wraps for nearly a decade before releasing it to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, which published it earlier this week.
Hirohito was protected from indictment in the Tokyo war crimes trials during a US occupation that wanted to use him as a symbol to rebuild Japan as a democratic nation. He died in 1989 at age 87, after 62 years on the throne.
Photo: AP
“It took me nine years to come forward, as I was afraid of a backlash,” said bookseller Takeo Hatano, who handled the document carefully as he showed it to reporters. “But now I hope the memo would help us figure out what really happened during the war, in which 3.1 million people were killed.”
Takahisa Furukawa, a Nihon University expert on wartime history who has confirmed the authenticity of the memo, called it the first detailed portrayal of Tojo and Hirohito just before the attack.
Palace documents have confirmed Hirohito’s daytime meeting with Tojo on Dec. 7, 1941, but without elaborating.
Photo: AP
The memo supports the view that Hirohito was not as concerned about waging war on the US as was once portrayed, Furukawa said.
The emperor had endorsed the government’s decision to scrap diplomatic options at a Dec. 1 meeting and his unchanged position the day before the attack reassured Tojo.
Yuzawa’s account portrays Tojo as upbeat and feeling a sense of accomplishment after all the required administrative steps for war had been taken and, most importantly, Hirohito had given him the final nod without asking any questions.
“If His Majesty had any regret over negotiations with Britain and the US, he would have looked somewhat grim. There was no such indication, which must be a result of his determination,” Tojo is quoted as saying in the memo. “I’m completely relieved. Given the current conditions, I could say we have practically won already.”
His optimism was misplaced. The Pearl Harbor attack killed nearly 2,400 US service personnel and caused major damage to the US Pacific Fleet. However, within months the tide was turning.
Tojo was blamed for prolonging the war after it was clearly lost, leading to the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. He was later executed as “Class-A” war criminal.
Tojo, whose administrative skills and loyalty had won Hirohito’s trust, was made prime minister just two months before the Pearl Harbor attack and served in the post for most of World War II.
Furukawa said that Tojo’s remarks in the memo about his relief at completing the preparations for war support evaluations of him as a good bureaucrat, but not a visionary leader.
More decisive leadership might have ended the war earlier, he said.
“Tojo is a bureaucrat who was incapable of making his own decisions, so he turned to the emperor as his supervisor. That’s why he had to report everything for the emperor to decide. If the emperor didn’t say no, then he would proceed,” Furukawa said. “Clearly, the memo shows the absence of political leadership in Japan.”
Yuzawa wrote in the memo that he was “moved and honored to get involved in war preparations at the time of a crucial event that would determine the fate of the Imperial state.”
He was later promoted to minister of the interior. but turned critical of Tojo’s leadership and was dismissed from the Cabinet over a policy difference.
“He is a man of passion and loyalty,” Yuzawa wrote of Tojo in a notebook he kept. “But he is so narrow-minded and he has no philosophy as a political leader.”
Hatano, a longtime acquaintance of some of Yuzawa’s descendants, received the notebook and other items from family members when they wanted to make room in their apartment. He found the memo folded in half inside the notebook about a year later.
“When I recognized the date, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, I knew it was something special,” he said.
He examined it repeatedly to try to make sense of the handwriting and archaic language.
“Then I spotted references to the emperor and prime minister Tojo,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number