Mystery of war criminal Tojo’s remains solved

Ultra-nationalists were looking to glorify ex-PM, 6 more as martyrs

Tokyo, June 14: Until recently, the location of executed wartime Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s remains was one of World War II’s biggest mysteries in the nation he once led. Now, a Japanese university professor has revealed declassified US military documents that appear to hold the answer.

The documents show the cremated ashes of Tojo, one of the masterminds of the Pearl Harbor attack, were scattered from a US Army aircraft over the

Pacific Ocean about 30 miles (50 kilometres) east of Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, south of Tokyo. It was a tensionfilled, highly secretive mission, with American officials apparently taking extreme steps meant to keep Tojo’s remains, and those of six others executed with him, away from ultranationalists looking to glorify them as martyrs.

The seven were hanged for war crimes just before Christmas in 1948, three years after Japan’s defeat.

The discovery brings partial closure to a painful chapter of Japanese history that still plays out today, as conservative Japanese politicians attempt to whitewash history, leading to friction with wartime victims, especially China and South Korea.

After years spent verifying and checking details and evaluating the significance of what he’d found, Nihon University Professor Hiroaki Takazawa publicly released the clues to the remains’ location last week. He came across the declassified documents in 2018 at the US National Archives in Washington.

It’s believed to be the first time official documents showing the handling of the seven war criminals’ remains were made public, according to Japan’s National Institute for Defence Studies and the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.

Hidetoshi Tojo, the leader’s great-grandson, told The Associated Press that the absence of the remains has long been a humiliation for the bereaved families, but he’s relieved the information has come to light. “If his remains were at least scattered in Japanese territorial waters ... I think he was still somewhat fortunate,” Tojo said.

“I want to invite my friends and lay flowers to pay tribute to him” if further details about the remains’ location becomes available. Hideki Tojo, prime minister during much of World War II, is a complicated figure, revered by some conservatives as a patriot but loathed by many in the West for prolonging the war, which ended only after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.

About a month after Aug. 15, 1945, when then-Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s defeat to a stunned nation, Tojo shot himself in a failed suicide attempt as he was about to be arrested at his modest Tokyo home.