Hideki Tojo (東條 英機, Tōjō Hideki (help·info), 30 December 1884 – 23 December 1948) was a Japanese politician, military leader and convicted war criminal who served as prime minister of Japan and president of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association for 1941 to 1944 during World War II. He assumed several more positions including chief of staff of the Imperial Army before ultimately being removed from power in July 1944. During his years in power, his leadership was marked by extreme state-perpetrated violence in the name of Japanese ultranationalism, much of which he was personally involved in.
Tojo was born on 30 December 1884, to a relatively low-ranking former samurai family in the Kōjimachi district of Tokyo. He began his career in the Army in 1902 and steadily rose through the ranks to become a general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) by 1934. In March 1937, he was promoted to chief of staff of the Kwantung Army whereby he led military operations against the Chinese in Inner Mongolia and the Chahar-Suiyan provinces. By July 1940, he was appointed minister of war to the Japanese government led by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe.
On the eve of the Second World War's expansion into Asia and the Pacific, Tojo was an outspoken advocate for a preemptive attack on the United States and its European allies. Upon being appointed prime minister on 17 October 1941, he oversaw the Empire of Japan's decision to go to war as well as its ensuing conquest of much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. During the course of the war, Tojo presided over numerous war crimes, including the massacre and starvation of civilians and prisoners of war. He was also involved in the sexual enslavement of thousands of mostly Korean women and girls for Japanese soldiers, an event that still strains modern Japanese–Korean relations.
After the war's tide decisively turned against Japan, Tojo resigned as prime minister on 18 July 1944. Following his nation's surrender to the Allied powers in September 1945, he was arrested, convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in the Tokyo Trials, sentenced to death, and hanged on 23 December 1948. To this day, Tojo's complicity in atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing, the Bataan Death March, and human experimentation entailing the torture and death of thousands have firmly intertwined his legacy with the brutality shown by the Japanese Empire throughout World War II.
