Posted on 08/12/2008 4:41:19 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
TOKYO - Japanese World War II leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being "frightened," a newly released diary reveals.
Excerpts from the approximately 20 pages written by Tojo in the final days of the war and held by the National Archives of Japan were published for the first time in several newspapers Tuesday.
"The notes show Tojo kept his died-in-the-wool militarist mentality until the very end," said Kazufumi Takayama, the archives curator, who confirmed the accuracy of the published excerpts. "They are extremely valuable."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I don’t know about him using Wainwright’s pistol, but the little Nip tried indeed to shoot himself to avoid being put on trial for war crimes.
Give the guy a measure of credit for not being a hypocrite. Unlike so many of "leaders" in the mideast, Tojo did try to avoid capture by committing suicide but he bungled the attempt, US medics brought him back to good health, he was tried and hanged.
The US put him in the infirmary, nursed him back to health, put him on trial for war crimes and then hanged him.
“I have always considered the bombing of Horoshima and Nagasaki to be among the greatest humanitarian events of the 20th century. Probably saved a million lives.”
Needs to be repeated..
having fought in three invasions and six campaigns all over North Africa and Europe, so at the beginning of August, 1945, he was getting ready to ship out to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. Years later... 
he told me he had no doubt the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life. He felt his number was up after all he been through from 1940-45.
If the truth be told, those bombings saved my Father's life and millions of Japanese lives also!
I agree.
Further supporting this position are the recollections of the bureaucrat running Radio Tokyo at the time. The militarists wanted to prevent him from broadcasting Hirohito’s message to his subjects. The radio station manager hid the tape from Tojo’s loyalists/militarists and went forward with the broadcast after the search for the recording.
Even after the second bomb, it was quite clear that the militarists were ready to burn their own country to the ground. If we had invaded without the psychological horror of the two bombs, we would have had to go forward with LeMay’s plan to burn Japanese cities to the ground as we did in the Tokyo firebombing raids. The estimates of Japanese civilian deaths in the planning was to be at least 1 million killed in the firebombings, and then many more in the ground invasion as the infantry and Marines moved across the island.
It would have taken us another year or two to pacify just the main island. At least. And it would have meant another 100K GI’s KIA, 1 million+ wounded at a minimum.
Personally I think future warfare should be technologically aimed at removing the absolute top tiers of leadership instead of a mass conflict of armies, be it sanctions, or kidnapping I am sure it can be done, just imagine what it could be if Hitler was shot dead by a sniper before the invasion of Poland, or Stalin.If it was never possible to build a Star Trek type of transporter a laser from space could replace an assassins bullet.
Yeah, I’ve seen those newsreels of Tojo manacled to his hospital bunk, smoking a provided cigarette, and the MPs displaying the U.S. made pistol he tried to commit suicide with.
Along with Tojo’s wife screaming about how a good man like her husband was being subjected to “victor’s justice” by the wicked Americans.
The Japan we know today didn’t get there by accident.
This diary of Tojo’s certainly takes the wind out of one of the left’s favorite lies, that Japan was in the initial stages of surrender when we dropped the bomb. An inconvenient diary?
I remember reading that when firearms became an accepted weapon with which to commit suicide in Japan, the proper/honorable way to employ a firearm for that use was to shoot oneself in the heart--not in the head.
If true, then Tojo was attempting to follow a code of conduct, not trying to spare his profile.
My uncle was at Iwo Jima.
But my dad took a pleasure trip there 20+ years later.... I think you can appreciate this story: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2057870/posts?page=29#29
He shot himself in the chest, aiming for his heart, but missed as his heartbeat was contracting when the bullet passed through. He was literally, saved for the hangman, by a heartbeat....
the infowarrior
Ummm, disk, Dave. They recorded him on a hard disk.
<}B^)
And then we hanged the sonofabitch!
LOL
They dropped the second bomb quickly to prove it was not a fluke...Tojo did not believe the stories about the first bomb.
BUT we did not have a third bomb ready.. It was a huge gamble that worked.
we didn’t have a third bomb.
That was part of the issue with using the bombs. Nobody was to know that two was all we had at that time. Making more but that was the whole shebang.
“More importantly, American lives were saved.”
A-MEN!
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