Today in 1948, in Tokyo Japan

Former Japanese premier and chief of the Kwantung Army, Hideki Tojo was executed by hanging with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II.  He was adjudged guilty and sentenced by the International Tribunal for the Far East more than three years after the end of hostilities.  The seven defendants were also found guilty of committing crimes against humanity in regard to their systematic genocide of the Chinese people.

On November 12, death sentences were imposed on Tojo and the six other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. The Tokyo trials leading to the death sentences featured a single chief prosecutor, American Joseph B. Keenan (a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general), but other nations, especially China, contributed to the proceedings, and Australian judge William Flood Webb presided.  Additionally, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes and more than 900 of those were executed.

Hideki Tojo

Tojo had been a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II (October 17, 1941 to July 22, 1944). As Prime Minister, he was directly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which initiated war between Japan and the United States.

[December 23, 1948]