10.(7-9) Apologies for Tojo/His Fine Romance

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7.  Real Ruler

Mrs. T. Opens the February 1944 American magazine Colliers to its lead article, topped by Tojo's caricature face. The subheading is ‘Hideki Tojo – Jap Hitler’; it is part of a series titled The Guilty. Translating the text rapidly and interspersing comment she reads:

The real ruler of Japan is not Hirohito but chunky granite face Hideki Tojo. As Premier, War Minister and Home Secretary, all power is in his hands for he controls the courts, the police and does military planning, and his assassins are quick to liquidate dissenters. More than any other, this walking venom-sack embodies the fanaticisms and ferocities of his race; for even as he forced war on China and the U.S. so he is waging wars with a barbarity unknown since men quit running around on all fours.

She removes glasses and comments: “This writer is a sitting venom-sac that embodies the fanaticisms and ferocities of racialism. He is inaccurate. Now that my husband has resigned at the Emperor’s order, it should be obvious who the ‘Real Ruler’ is. My husband has never believed in government by assassination as he proved by stamping out the 1936 mutiny. And he was not in any policy setting position when war with China was decided and he has spoken against maltreatment of civilians. And we Japanese are a nationality rather than a race. The only race we belong to is Human, which has never run around on all fours and which, speaking as a woman, I object to hear being referred to as ‘men’.” She continues the reading.

The horrors of Nanking, Hongkong and Shanghai did not proceed from the sudden fury of wild beasts excited by the smell of blood. Japanese troops acted under the direct orders of Tojo: ‘In pursuit be thorough and inexorable.’ The bayoneting of British and Canadian captured and wounded, the rape and murder of hospital nurses, the torture of prisoners, the beheading of Chinese noncombatants until the very gutters ran blood – all these bestialities trace back to Hideki Tojo insane with his hate of ‘foreign devils’ and infatuated with the German theory of Schrecklichkeit (Terrorization).

“They have twisted it,” she says, pale with anger. “My husband was not in power then. When he was appointed War Minister he sacked General Matsui, the man responsible for Nanking. They purposely mistranslate my husband’s orders to troops to make it sound like a license to kill and torture. He never said ‘be thorough and inexorable in pursuit’; his actual words ‘be decisive and thorough but deal with matters justly and conduct yourself in such a way as not to be ashamed of your behavior in the sight of heaven or in the eyes of man’ do not sound like a free ticket. Should my husband be blamed if riff-raff ran amok?”

   Mrs. T. is excited and Kimi wishes she would stop reading but she continues.

The Death March from Bataan, that ghastly journey in the course of which hundreds of American soldiers died of starvation, beatings and stabbings is another crime that lies at Tojo’s doorstep. His violation of every rule of civilized warfare was deliberate, and the war in the Pacific has been marked by the same ordered animalism. Captives lashed to trees and bayoneted into pulp; others mutilated, daubed with honey and staked out on the ground for the ants to eat; still others blinded and broken and thrown into the jungle to the mercy of its night creatures. For these and all other atrocities, Hideki Tojo, supreme warlord is responsible.

“No! No! No!” she almost shouts shaking the magazine furiously. “My husband is an honorable man. When he heard about the Bataan March he fired General Honma and sent orders that war prisoners be treated no differently than our own soldiers.”

Kimi winces inwardly, recalling both Kimura’s and Jun’s descriptions of how ‘our own’ are treated. It seems irrelevant whether it is Tojo or other who is guilty. The war is the crime.

The whole life of the man is red with blood and black with treachery. He first rose to fame in 1932 when he and his assassins set out to still every voice that preached peace or liberalism. Prime Minister Inukai, Foreign Minister Inouye and Baron Takuma Dan, head of the great house of Mitsui, were murdered in swift succession, and two years later, Major General Nagata, Chief of the Military Affairs Bureau and Tojo’s superior was stabbed to death as he sat in his office.

“My husband was a minor military officer in 1932,” Mrs. Tojo, now calmer, comments. “He belonged to no secret society and had nothing to do with assassination.”

The pace however was too fast even for a people accustomed to assassination, and an imperial order sent Tojo to the sticks. A forceful schemer and un-resting, he soon reappeared as head of the Military Gendarmerie, a combination of Gestapo and OGPU, and then bobbed up in command of the Kwantung Army. He proceeded to aggravate the ‘China Incident’ by marching his men into the province of Chahar, starting the bloody business that was to lay China waste.

“The only thing accurate about this is the summary of my husband’s various positions. Manchukuo is by no means ‘the sticks’. It was the most sensitive part of the Empire, and Hideki was sent there not as punishment but to control the hotheads.”

Slaughter battles; the massacre of unarmed civilians, was a Tojo invention, and it was Tojo who accelerated the opium traffic, even doping the candy given to little children. He also rounded up vast numbers of Chinese for deportation to Manchuria where they died by thousands under the lash of Japanese masters. There were still some sane men in the government and in 1936 the indefatigable Tojo engineered another ‘patriotic purge’. Officers of the Army forming a murder gang shot down 80-year old Takahashi, Minister of Finance; Admiral Saito, Lord Keeper of the Seals; and Inspector General Watanabe. Prime Minister Okada was on the list, but the assassins killed his brother-in-law by mistake. On the heels of this purge, Tojo was made Vice Minister of War, and lost no time in declaring the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, meaning an end to all white interference in the Orient.

“The Chronology is wrong. My husband was not appointed until March 1938, two years after the Mutiny. He became Vice Minister for putting it down. Is it crime to get Europe out of Asia?”

Konoye, the Prime Minister, stood out against the war with the United States, and so did Baron Hiranuma, the Home Secretary, but when an assassin’s bullet put Hiranuma in a hospital bed, Konoye found it expedient to resign, and deadly Hideki Tojo took his place. With the Army under his absolute control and Hirohito no more than a puppet, the iron-willed gangster struck the match that was to set fire to his powder train. Hurrying Kurusu to Washington to keep the United States cajoled and befooled, he launched his attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Here is the key to this hatchet job,” she cries, putting finger on ‘Konoye’ and going on to use language Kimi never expects of a refined educated woman. “That 2-face is a rat deserting our sinking ship, trying to pose now as peace lover then, when all the time it was he and his aristocrat clique that first led loyal soldiers like my husband into this morass.”

   The rough words surprise Kimi but what is most startling is the implication of an as yet unmentioned, unmentionable Imperial co-conspirator. She recalls standing in the crowd across from Imperial Palace and the view of the little Big Man in wooden soldier military regalia on white horse.

There will be no peace as long as ‘old Razor Blades’ stays at the head of Japan’s government. As venomous as he is implacable he has ordered a war to the death and he means just that: No quarter! Kill, burn, torture and hara-kiri, – the samurai way rather than capture. That is the sad part of it. Hitler and Mussolini, in all likelihood, will break and crawl at the last, but Hideki Tojo will never let himself live to be tried by ‘foreign barbarians’. The only thing to do is to hasten the day when he will plunge a knife into his belly, draw it across and turn it upwards.

“Well, he is out,” she says in disgust and throws the magazine down. “Now let us see if this prophesy comes true. There will be no peace until the real perpetrator of this war wills it. And he…..” She stops suddenly as if aware she has gone over a line then picks up her thought “… and he bides his time until the military is completely disgraced in the eyes of the masses.” Silence, then “Please excuse my starting you off with such a heavy subject, dear, but it has been on my mind many weeks and till now I have had no intelligent ear.”

 8.  Our Uniqueness

Rest of morning is for literature and history. From shelf, Mrs. T. pulls a thick book worn from reading.
   She comments;  “H.G. Wells is my favorite author and The Outline of History his best.” She opens at random to a page heavily marked by pencil. “I got this copy from HG in 1938 and have read it several times and am convinced by the message; but my husband’s attitude is immovable. Basically a good man – loyal, truthful, industrious – he is of his environment. Born at the height of Meiji, of a father who worked his way up through the ranks from private soldier to general, fed from boyhood on the divine origin and masterful destiny of our people and rigidly conditioned to obey and protect the Emperor, there is no way he can accept the commonality and single destiny of humanity. Rather, he persists in a belief in Japan’s uniqueness – unique origin of land and people from sun goddess, unique mentality superior to all other people, and unique destiny to liberate fellow Asian from white and to supplant China as the center.
   "It all sounded wonderful and heroic especially after the easy wins in Korea and Manchu but now reality intervenes: War in China where we win every battle but the war goes on; the stinging defeat by the Soviets at Nomonhan and then the crowning idiocy – Pearl Harbor!” She throws her hands up in disgust then changes to: Hideki goes a wooing.

9.  Rolls in the Hay

Mrs. T. continues about Tojo: “When I came to Tokyo to college I got in touch with Hideki’s father, a distant relation and soon I was a frequent visitor at the Tojo's and heard from his younger sister that the parents were busy trying to pick a suitable husband for me. Then, Hideki stepped in. Today, everyone thinks him a stuffy old bore who attends only to military business but, Oh my!” Mrs. T. pauses to give Kimi arched eyebrows. “Were I still virgin I should blush thinking how Hideki gave me the rush. Talk about moonlight walks and groping kisses and squeezes in the dark and other loving touches, and even rolls in the hay – Oh my goodness!” She again arches eyebrows. “You would not believe, my dear!” She closes eyes and looks up while taking a deep breath and smiling contentedly.
   “Well, it was no surprise to me when one day he ups and tells his parents 'I’ll marry Katsu myself!' They thought he joked because we are second cousins and it never crossed anyone’s mind we were really kissing cousins, you know.” Mrs. pours 2 cups of freshly brewed English tea.

   “Soon as they saw he was serious, and especially when I told my mother he took my cherry – you know, I lost my virgin – the marriage was arranged the traditional way, with go-between and formal first meeting. My parents were, after all, relieved because previously I had declared my intention to devote myself to English literature and, even today, ‘career girl’ is not acceptable to parents. But at that time; Oh my! Oh my! As you might guess, my dear, the choices facing a young unmarried woman in our country are limited to becoming an Ignoramus Mrs, a Paid-for Mistress or a Lonely Old Miss.” Lightly slapping her right hand to her chest, she exclaims “This one chose to become none of those! I was still determined to complete my education at Tokyo Women’s College and – this may surprise – Hideki was all in favor – he was a Thoroughly Modern Milton with strong belief in Social Darwinism within a Japanese context, and he desired an educated wife to assure maximal educational environment so that children would start with an advantage in their struggle in life.”

   She dabs her eyes with handkerchief. “The children,” she remarks as if memory had been jogged. “My plan for education was disrupted by pregnancy but raising our children has stimulated me to educate myself in ways I should never have done if childless.”
   Her eyes brighten with good humor as she leans towards Kimi. "Don’t you know, I am considered expert on children? I ought to be, after seven. But my well publicized ‘Having babies is fun’ was not my preferred. What I really think is ‘Making babies is fun but having one is hell!’”

   She gets up and returns with book, dog-eared from heavy referencing. Translating the title Behavioral Principles of Child Rearing, she explains it is a tome by Psychologist Thomas Watson who taught that the basis of human behavior is external influences especially in infancy and childhood. By arranging an environment one could, in Watson’s words, make a child into doctor, lawyer, engineer, farmer, merchant, or even a thief.

   “Hideki has left the children completely to me and I studied Watson’s system,” she explains with a Gioconda (Mona Lisa) smile. “And not one of my boys has chosen the military, and all my girls are Moga (slang for “modern girl”) who will help rebuild and repopulate the New Japan with the New People after this horrid war.”

   It is first time Kimi hears New Japan but she is surprised by New People which she recalls from Tommy’s Seminar. The words fill her with quiet joy as she thinks “I am that too and have started my repopulating.”
   To read now, click 10.10 The Jewish Question