World War II: Hideki Tojo's ashes scattered by US, documents reveal

[Jimbuna]

The remains of Japan's World War II prime minister were scattered over the Pacific Ocean after his execution, US documents have revealed.

Officials were concerned supporters of Hideki Tojo - one of the men behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 - would try to find his body and treat him as a martyr.

After his execution for war crimes in 1948 he and six others were cremated.

A US Army aircraft then dropped their ashes in the ocean.

Japanese lecturer Hiroaki Takazawa at Tokyo's Nijon University found the declassified documents at the US National Archives in Washington DC.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57474104

[Aktungbby]

...precisely why we dropped Osama Bin Laden in the briney as well.

[MGR1]

Always a tricky thing to deal with. The same thing happened to the remains of those Nazis that were executed as well.

Mike.

[Mr Quatro]

Ha ha Hitler cremated himself

[Jeff-Groves]

We'll tell them exactly where We dumped the ashes as soon as they
acknowledge and apologize for what they did to U.S. Prisoners of War.

Still amazes me the whine over the A-Bombs compared to chopping heads off and bayoneting babies for YEARS!
Not to mention sex slaves for Service men.

Suck it up! You lost. We Won. And it's all a new Game now with new Rules most are not aware of.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Ha ha Hitler cremated himself

Wrong again, Mr Quatro: there was no self-immolation; after taking the easy way out, Hitler's slavishly devoted lackeys, fearing the Russians might do to their dear, dear Fuhrer what the Italians did to Mussolini, humped his and Eva's bodies out of the Bunker, dumped them into a crater from a shelling, doused them in gasoline, and set them afire; just another example how, in history, political fanatics who led their people into tragic ends so very often seek the easy way out, leaving their sad sack followers to bear the brunt of responsibility for their leader's actions...


The subject of self-immolation reminds me of something that happened when I was working in an office in 2000; a few of us, of roughly the same age, give or take five years, spent some down time talking about the 60s and we were discussing the Vietnam War protests in the US at the time; we were watching some internet videos of the protests when a few of the rather much younger employees came in and started to watch, also; one young lady commented on how brutal some of the clashes were and how brave the protesters were to stand up for what they believed; I told her, if she really wanted to see an example of expressing one's utter dissatisfaction with the status quo, I could show her a very radical act of protest; I found and brought up on the screen a video of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who committed acts of self-immolation in protest of the Vietnamese government and The War; when one scene showed a rather young monk calmly walking into an intersection, dousing himself in some sort of accelerant, serenely sit down in a lotus position, and quietly set himself ablaze, the young lady was stunned; her response: "That is really commitment to a cause..."...




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[Jimbuna]

I think that is what Mr Quatro was meaning.

[vienna]

I'm still thinking along the lines of not Hitler got what he deserved, rather he, like a lot of the other clay-footed 'hero leaders' in history who got upended in the end, chose to avoid responsibility; some do it by suicide, some by fleeing into exile, some by seeking to cast blame on the very same people who followed the leader's failed path, or by claiming they, the leader, was the one who was 'misled', 'ill-counseled', and 'ill-informed' by their minions, so it was all just a 'big misunderstanding'; Tojo did try to commit suicide by shooting himself when the US soldiers were sent to arrest him, but suicide is a traditional and socially accepted part of the Japanese national psyche, particularly when one has failed at a mission or goal, and suicide , in Japan, is an expression of taking ultimate (very ultimate) responsibility for one's failure(s); Tojo could have fled Japan or, like Hitler, shot himself before the knock came at his door, but he stayed and did not shoot himself until the Army troops arrived to bear witness (incidentally, MacArthur was so concerned, after Tojo's suicide attempt, he ordered Army medical personnel to accompany the troops who were sent to arrest other Japanese high officials); Tojo, and, in fact, a very large number of the Japanese high command, did not seek to flee but stayed at their homes and awaited the arrival of the arresting Army troops, also taking responsibility for their actions and decisions; and when Tojo recovered from his wounds, he willingly stood trial, and accepted full responsibility for all of his actions and decisions during the War...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideki_Tojo

Tojo was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for war crimes and found guilty of, among other actions, waging wars of aggression; war in violation of international law; unprovoked or aggressive war against various nations; and ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.

Crimes committed by Imperial Japan were responsible for the deaths of millions (some estimate between 3 million and 14 million) of civilians and prisoners of war through massacre, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor that was either directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government with a significant portion of them occurring during Tojo's rule of the military. One source attributes 5 million civilian deaths to Tojo's rule of the military.

Hideki Tojo accepted full responsibility for his actions during the war, and made this speech:

Tojo was sentenced to death on November 12, 1948, and executed by hanging 41 days later on December 23, 1948, a week before his 64th birthday. Before his execution, he gave his military ribbons to one of his guards; they are on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. In his final statement, he apologised for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and urged the American military to show compassion toward the Japanese people, who had suffered devastating air attacks and the two atomic bombings. He recognised the same in his poems, which were discovered much later.

Hitler on the other, hand was spent his last days and hours as a delusional, raving rat in his rat hole, and, when he had no where else to run, poisoned his dogs and then shot himself to avoid facing responsibility, just like a lot of the other petty tyrants, or wannabes, in history; he did not commit suicide in atonement for his actions and their consequences, he did so so avoid being held up to the lens of justice; Tojo stood his ground, waited for the arrival of the troops and then tried to make a (Japanese) gesture of atonement; even though I still believe Tojo is a rank war criminal, I do respect his resolve to, at least in some way, own up to what he did...

Tojo was an interesting person; prior to WW2, the Japanese government made an effort, through its Consulate in Hawai'i to recruit some Japanese-Americans as spies and/or saboteurs for use in the coming war effort; the attempt is recorded in intercepts made by US Intelligence who had broken, unbeknownst to Japan, the top secret codes used by the Japanese military and diplomatic corps; one of the final messages sent back to Japan by the Consulate expressed extreme frustration over the fact not a single person of Japanese descent in Hawai'i was willing to entertain the idea of working for Japan against the US (this total lack of Japanese-American desire to assist Japan was also borne out by a prewar investigation ordered by the US Army General in charge of Hawai'i, at the behest of Washington, DC, to determine the extent of any possible probable J-A collusion with Japan, should war break out; the very thorough US investigation also found not a single bit of evidence nor indication of any existing or probable/possible collusion); when war did breakout, along with messages to the Japanese troops regarding their duty to fight the war, the Japanese military and government (which was, for all intents and purposes, Tojo) also sent a message, by radio, to all Japanese native born or naturalized citizens of the US reminding them of an individual's responsibility to be loyal to their country, and that, as US citizens their loyalty was to the US and Japan expected them to honor that loyalty and would not make any demands/expectation they betray that loyalty; rather unlike the situation with Nazi Germany, where many US Bund members and other US citizen Nazi sympathizers were caught, arrested, tried, and convicted for acts of espionage and sabotage, there was not a single instance during the War of a US Japanese-American citizen on US soil ever caught committing or charged with treason, and that in spite of the US government declaring, at the start of the War, Japanese-Americans as "enemy combatants, seizing their property, and interning them in concentration camps far from their homes; it is a testament to their loyalty that they remained loyal and faithful to the ideals of the US even as the government of the US was treating them so unjustly and cruelly...




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