The Evening Star (April 29, 1946)
Tojo and 27 others face arraignment Friday for crimes
TOKYO (AP) – Former Premier Hideki Tojo and 27 other Japanese militaristic leaders were indicted by the Allies today as war criminals. They will be arraigned Friday on 55 specific charges, ranging from murder of thousands of Americans – on Pearl Harbor Day – to conspiracy to hammer the whole world into slave states of the Axis.
Defense attorneys are expected to be given reasonable time to prepare their cases before trial begin before an 11-nation tribunal.
Tribunal members heard Joseph B. Keenan, chief Allied prosecutor, read the indictments at the Japanese War Ministry Building, then called Capt. Beverly M. Coleman, USN, who will head the defense, into a brief conference.
Neither Mr. Keenan nor Chief Justice Sir William Webb, who heads the Allied tribunal, would comment as they left the building after the historic 35-minute session.
Charges in three categories
As he presented the indictments, Mr. Keenan outlined three categories of charges: Crimes against peace, “conventional” war crimes, and “crimes against humanity.” Offenses thus range from maltreatment of individuals to world conspiracy, and Mr. Keenan made it plain that the whole 18-year story of Japan’s bloody bid for world power will be told in the forthcoming trials.
Named in the indictments were:
-
Four former premiers: Tojo, Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota and Gen. Kuniaki Koiso.
-
Adm. Osami Nagano, former chief of staff whose direct order launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.
-
Gen. Kenji Doihara, Japan’s “Lawrence of Manchuria,” who engineered the prewar Manchurian incident.
-
Three principal arrangers of the tripartite pact with Italy and Germany: Former Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, Gen. Hiroshi Oshima (ex-ambassador to Germany), and Toshio Shiratori (ex-ambassador to Italy).
-
Six other former ministers: Gen. Sadao Araki (war), Okinori Kaya (finance), Jiro Minami (war), Mamoru Shigemitsu (foreign), Shigetaro Shimada (navy), and Shigenori Togo (foreign minister when the war began).
-
Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu, who with Shigemitsu signed surrender terms aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay last September.
-
Marquis Koichi Kido, former lord keeper of the Privy Seal and influential adviser to Emperor Hirohito.
-
Six other army leaders: Col. Kingoro Hashimoto (whose artillery helped sink the American gunboat Panay in China before the war), Shunroku Hata (former field marshal and commander in chief in China), Shishiro Itagaki (former general and chief of staff of Japan’s Kwantung Army), Heitaro Kimura (former general and Kwantung chief of staff), Gen. Iwane Matsui (commandant during the rape of Nanking), and Akira Muto (chief of staff under Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in the Philippines).
-
Naoki Hoshino, former president of Tojo’s Planning Board.
-
Takasumi Oka, former director, navy bureau of military affairs.
-
Shumei Okawa, civilian official of the South Manchurian Railway, propagandist for expulsion of whites from Asia.
-
Kenryo Sato, former chief of military affairs bureau, war ministry.
-
Teiichi Suzuki, former president of the Cabinet Planning Board.
Hirohito not mentioned*
Not mentioned in the indictments were Emperor Hirohito and a half dozen of Tojo’s former cabinet ministers: Michio Yuzawa, Michiyo Iwamura, Kunihiko Hashida, Hiroya Ino, Nobusuke Kishi and Vice Adm. Ken Terajima.
Mr. Keenan did not refer to them, but commented that omission of a name “in no sense implies” exoneration; other names may be added.
Indictments included specific charges of starting the war against the 11 Allied nations, and 16 of the prisoners – including Tojo – were accused of murder by “ordering, causing and permitting the armed forces of Japan to attack territory, ships and airplanes” of other nations in the December 7, 1941, attacks. The charge listed as murdered about 4,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor and others in the Philippines.
Accused with Tojo in the murders were Doihara, Hiranuma, Hirota, Hoshino, Kaya, Kido, Kimura, Muto, Nagano, Oka, Oshima, Sato, Shimada, Suzuki and Togo.
The Indian Express (April 30, 1946)
Gen. Tojo and 27 others indicted
TOKYO, April 29 – General Hideki Tojo and 27 other alleged major Japanese war criminals were indicted today.
Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders are charged with planning, preparing, initiating and waging wars of aggression in violation of international law and treaties, committing wholesale murder and instigating numerous “crimes against humanity.”
General Tojo was the Prime Minister of Japan at the time of Pearl Harbour.
The Evening Star (May 1, 1946)
Tojo insists Japan fought in war for ‘self-protection’
TOKYO (AP) – Hideki Tojo insisted today from his prison cell that Japan fought “a war of self-protection,” and indicated he would face the International War Crimes Tribunal with no remorse.
In an exclusive, written interview through his principal Japanese attorney – Ichiro Kiyose – the one-time dictator made his first statement on the war since the occupation.
Tojo acknowledged that he had spoken against Japan’s surrender – proposing continued resistance – but denied that he had taken any direct action to forcibly prevent the emperor’s surrender rescript.
The bald, stern little man declared he would “express my whole opinion” in court but dodged a question whether he intended to condemn American leaders while presenting his defense.
Repeats propaganda theme
He said that if, in 1941, Japan could have taken any other way than war “as an independent country I would have taken it.” He repeated Japan’s favorite propaganda, faith in an Asiatic co-prosperity sphere, indicating clearly that he would rest a considerable part of his defense on the “righteousness” of Japan’s war.
Kiyose visited the former premier 30 minutes today and reported him “in good health and good spirits.” The trial may be held in June.
Tojo, writing his answers to 10 questions in clear, bold characters, declared:
“We did not want to invade any Oriental countries. I thought this was a war to emancipate Oriental countries from foreign influences and enjoy a co-prosperity sphere of freedom and equality.
“But during the war, in order to complete it, we could not refrain from using natural resources (of the occupied areas) and imposing several restrictions on the people’s right.”
Wants new standard
He said these restrictions were to continue only during the war, after which the Oriental countries were to live on “a principle of freedom,” but the war ended differently and “it is regrettable that this idea has taken a different shape.”
Tojo said he wanted “from the bottom of my heart, for Japan to revive in a new standard” but did not explain.
His steadfastness to the same idea with which he announced the opening of the war at least is different from that of many Japanese. Several co-defendants now insist they had nothing to do with the hostilities.
Tojo declared he was “surprised” when he was named premier in 1941, although the late Prince Konoye and others said Tojo had engineered the cabinet downfall that placed him in power.
Believed Japan would win
Tojo refused to answer this question: “Do you feel now that it was better that you lived through your suicide attempt?”
He also refused to say whether his decisions would have been effected if the Japanese Navy more strongly had opposed war in 1941, whether he thought all of the principal Japanese figures had been accused of war crimes and what he thought of the trials in general.
The war-instigating premier said, “Of course I believed we would win the war” at the outset but he refused to express an opinion on how or when Japan had lost.
He said he would answer in court the questions when did he become convinced that war with the United States and Britain was inevitable.
Until now, he had remained silent. His answers today indicated the razor-tongued Tojo won’t spare words when he goes into court.
Editorial: Japanese Nuernberg
A “war-crimes trial” similar in character and presumably equal in significance to that which has been going on during recent months in Nuernberg, Germany, is now under way in the somber War Ministry Building in Tokyo. There Japan’s wartime Premier Hideki Tojo and twenty-seven other members of what the prosecution describes as a “criminal militaristic clique” were formally arraigned on fifty-five counts in war-crimes indictments.
As at Nuernberg against the main architects and executors of Nazidom, the Tokyo indictments cover not only specific breaches of traditional international war codes, such as acts against prisoners and internees, but also conspiracy to “dominate and exploit the world” in conjunction with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Indeed, the charges include planning acts of aggression against Soviet Russia during the years preceding the Pacific war which the accused actually precipitated by attacking the United States at Pearl Harbor and levying war against Australia, Canada, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, the Netherlands, the Philippines, New Zealand and the United States. That is why Soviet Russia is also included among the prosecutors, the theory being that Japan would have attacked the Soviet Union if it had not been deterred by Russia’s obvious strength. Indeed, the indictment goes back to “acts of aggression” against the Soviet Union in the years before 1941, these acts being the series of border disputes along the frontiers of Japanese-dominated Korea, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. In the same way, France is included because of Japanese action in French Indochina, before Pearl Harbor, though technical hostilities never materialized owing to the complaisance of the Vichy French local authorities.
The “world-conspiracy” item includes such internal acts as the “systematic poisoning” of the Japanese people with “harmful ideas of alleged racial superiority of Japan over the whole people of Asia and even the whole world,” the implementation of parliamentary institutions for warlike ends, and the mobilization of Japan’s economic and financial resources “for war aims, to the detriment of the welfare of the people of Japan.”
Obviously the Japanese trials, like those at Nuernberg, represent a radically novel departure in international law – at least in its interpretation. That executive and parliamentary heads of governments can be indicted for the crime of planning and preparing armed aggression, in advance of actual hostilities and apart from acts in contravention of the accepted us ages of war, is something that would have not been seriously considered before World War II. A major extension of the field of international law is clearly in process of realization.
The Wilmington Morning Star (May 3, 1946)
Top flight Japs ready for trial
Tojo, 23 others arrive in court under heavy guard
TOKYO (AP) – Hideki Tojo and 25 other top flight Japanese war criminal suspects were brought to the War Ministry building under heavy guard at 8:40 a.m. (6:40 p.m. Thursday EST) to be arraigned.
They were driven from Sugamo prison in a big United States bus with shaded windows. They were followed by military police in white jeeps.
Araki first
Gen. Sadao Araki, with a heavy handlebar mustache, stepped out of the bus first, carrying a copy of his indictment wrapped in cloth. He was Tojo’s war minister.
Entrance of the suspects into the building was delayed for 10 minutes while photographers took pictures of the former Japanese leaders.
In three lines
The 26 prisoners were marched into the somber War Ministry building in three lines. As they went into a reception ball adjoining the second-floor courtroom, they encountered Lt. Col. Aubrey Kenworthy of Omaha, Nebraska, tribunal 'marshal, who commented as the last prisoner entered: “I am batting 1,000 percent.”
Former Premier Tojo was in the center of the lineup, wearing a dark suit and a khaki army cap. Most defendants wore civilian clothes. All but one, Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, whose artillery shelled and help sink the gunboat USS Panay, wore shoes. Hashimoto clattered into the building on wooden geta.
White-helmeted Eighth Army military police stood by on the alert as the prisoners marched into the buildings. Some M.P.’s were armed with pistols, others with tommy guns.
But the accused men, who once commanded thousands of soldiers, sailors and civilian Japanese, were quiet and docile.
The prisoners arrived nearly two hours ahead of their scheduled appearance before the Far East International Tribunal at 10:30 a.m.
The Evening Star (May 3, 1946)
Playful defendant slaps Tojo on bald head as trial begins
TOKYO (AP) – Two lusty slaps on the top of Hideki Tojo’s glistening bald head by a capricious codefendant startled the courtroom this afternoon as 28 Japanese heard themselves accused of having plunged the Pacific into a war of greed.
The playful smacks were only part of the antics of Shumei Okawa, who long advocated an aggressive war to drive the white races from Asia.
Shouting gibberish that even the Japanese said they could not understand, Okawa had to be pulled forcibly from the courtroom by American military police at an afternoon recess.
As clerks droned through the lengthy indictments in both English and Japanese at the nine-justice international tribunal’s first session, Okawa – once an official of the South Manchurian Railway – prayed with gestures and unbuttoned his blouse to bare his thin chest.
Then, with a cunning grin, he leaned forward and slapped the unsuspecting Tojo on his shaven head.
The smack echoed in the auditorium, crowded with sober-faced officials and spectators. The shocked former premier looked up quickly from the copy of the indictment he had been studying, then turned and looked at the man in the row behind him with a sad, understanding smile.
Lt. Col. S. Kenworthy, in charge of guarding the defendants, grabbed Okawa and settled him firmly in his seat, just as he had done earlier, when he buttoned the prisoner’s shirt.
As the court recessed and photographers streamed onto the floor Okawa again resoundingly slapped the glistening head as Tojo busied himself with his papers. Tojo just grinned.
Okawa was pulled from the room ahead of the other 27 defendants. He kicked off his shoes and went barefoot. When he returned after the recess, he was wearing a dark overcoat over his military cut gray uniform and was docile.
Opinion was divided as to the reasons for his actions. Some thought he might be trying to impress the court that he was not mentally able to defend himself. However, his slapping of Tojo – who chanced to be seated in front of him – appeared playful rather than in wrath.
As the day’s session ended at 4:40 p.m., clerks had waded through 47 of the 55 counts in the bulky indictment. All of the indictment must be read because the defendants refused to waive the right to hear it in court. The reading will be completed after court resumes at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow (7:30 p.m. EST tonight). Then the defendants will enter pleas, all of which are expected to be “innocent.”
Except Okawa – who is accused of being a conspirator in the Mukden incident as well as a plotter of the Pacific war – the defendants were a pretty somber group at their arraignment. For the most part they paid the closest attention to the proceedings and almost all followed the Japanese translation.
The morning session was brief. Chief Justice Sir William Webb read a statement pledging a fair trial. He said in part:
“There has been no more important criminal trial in all history… The accused were no mere provincial governors, but for more than a decade were the leaders of Japan at the height of her power. … The crimes alleged are crimes against the peace of the world… against humanity. … The number and equality of crimes charged insure for them the most anxious consideration. … To our great task we bring open minds. … Onus will be on the prosecution to established guilt beyond reasonable doubt…”
The morning session then adjourned until afternoon to await the arrival by plane from Bangkok, Siam, of two of the defendants, Gen. Seishiro Itagaki and Gen. Heitaro Kimura, so the indictment would not have to be read again.
Friends and relatives of the indicted Japanese watched the proceedings from the courtroom gallery, but only a few were willing to comment.
Shinichi Hasegawa, former secretary to former Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, one of the prisoners, was an exception. He said “Matsuoka will die before the trial is over if he continues to get the treatment he is getting now,” adding “everybody is commenting on the contrast between the thinness of the defendants and the fatness of the prosecution.”
The prisoners’ lunch today included beef pot pie, mashed potatoes, buttered peas, bread and butter and coffee.
Japanese spectators evidently took seriously warnings that they would be searched before entering the courtroom.
Military policemen and a matron who went over the spectators at the door found not a single prohibited article except a couple of rolls of film.
20 civilian lawyers picked to defend Tojo and aides
Twenty civilian lawyers have been selected to defend former Premier Tojo and other Japanese accused as war criminals at their trial before an international tribunal in Tokyo, the War Department reported late yesterday.
The group, supplemented by four military attorneys, will leave for Tokyo by air next week. Already on the scene are 32 members of the prosecution staff headed by Joseph B. Keenan, former assistant to the attorney general.
The defense attorneys all have had criminal trial experience, officials said. They include lawyers recently released from Army and Navy service and were selected by Army’s judge advocate general with advice of the Justice Department.
Included are John W. Guyder, James N. Freeman and David F. Smith, all of Washington.
The Evening Star (May 4, 1946)
Tokyo court arranges mental test for Jap who slapped Tojo
TOKYO (AP) – Shumei Okawa, who gleefully slapped Hideki Tojo’s gleaming bald head, today was removed from court so psychiatrists could determine if he is mentally able to defend himself against war crimes charges.
“I must kill Tojo,” the gaunt, 61-year-old Okawa said in high-pitched English as he was removed from the courtroom. “It will be for the good of my country.”
He was absent when clerks completed the tedious reading of the bulky 55-count indictment accusing him, Tojo and 26 other once high-ranking Japanese of responsibility for the Pacific war.
Repetition is prevented
Chief Justice Sir William Webb recessed the international tribunal until Monday. Then the defendants will enter their pleas – all expected to be “innocent” – unless the defense prolongs its announced challenge of the court’s jurisdiction.
The justices acted promptly today to prevent Okawa from repeating yesterday’s prayer pantomimes, chest exposure, thumping of Tojo’s glistening olive pate, or appearing in court barefoot. They ordered that the former South Manchurian Railway official be examined by two psychiatrists, one representing the defense, the other the prosecution.
Okawa’s attorney, Shinichi Ohara, said he had no objection to the arraignment proceeding in his client’s absence and reading of the indictment in both Japanese and English was finished.
Double-crossed, Okawa says
Ohara, talking with Japanese reporters about the queer behavior of his client, said: “I don’t know why Dr. Okawa slapped former Premier Tojo’s head. But he used to refer to Tojo as ‘stone head.’”
In an anteroom interview Okawa was incoherent trying to explain why he wanted to kill Tojo, but muttered something about having been double-crossed. He fluttered from one subject to another.
Asked whether he were guilty or innocent, he replied, “Me and Happy Chandler are great friends.” He added that he and the American baseball commissioner were going into business together.
The Evening Star (May 5, 1946)
D.C. defender of Tojo says U.S. will gain in giving fair trial
The interest of every American will be served in giving a “scrupulously fair trial” to Tojo and the other Jap war leaders indicted last week, John W. Guider, one of the lawyers who will defend them, declared last night.
Mr. Guider, a senior partner in the Washington firm of Hogan and Hartson, who was recently released from active duty in the Navy as a captain, plans to fly to Tokyo Tuesday to serve on the panel of 20 American lawyers defending the Jap war lords.
Asked about the position of an American lawyer in defending these former enemies, Mr. Guider said a fair trial was in the interest of every American “in order that no doubts may ever be cast on the validity of any verdict or findings that are reached.”
“We will have to live ourselves under any new law that may come out of these trials and defense counsel are in the best possible position to test the wisdom and validity of any new or novel legal theories that may be urged upon the court,” he added.
“It is likely that some of these theories will find no previous expression in either statute, treaty or custom and we should test them carefully before we permit them to be adopted as our considered concept of international responsibility.”
A 1922 graduate of the Naval Academy, Mr. Guider graduated from Georgetown Law School in 1926 and practiced law for 16 years in Washington before going on active duty in the Navy in September 1942. He was a partner as well as son-in-law of the late Frank J. Hogan, a leader of the district bar and former president of the American Bar Association.
He was officially commended for his naval service by the secretary of the Navy.
Mr. Guider will go to Tokyo as a civilian.
The Evening Star (May 6, 1946)
Tojo and 26 others plead not guilty; trials start June 3
TOKYO (AP) – Hideki Tojo and 26 other wartime leaders of Japan today entered staccato pleas of not guilty to charges that they unleashed a war of aggression and murder in the Pacific. They were ordered to trial June 3 despite protest of their counsel that the interval is too short.
The Far East tribunal, before which the 27 appeared for their first formal hearing, however, will convene again next Monday to permit the defense to renew its emphatic challenge that the court has no jurisdiction in the pending cases.
Tojo’s attorney, Ichiro Kiyose, lost no time today in attacking the tribunal. He charged that the court’s president, Sir William Webb of Australia, has been so biased by his investigation of Japanese atrocities in New Guinea that he cannot judge fairly.
Motion promptly denied
The motion was promptly denied after a 10-minute recess conference. With Webb absent from the discussion, eight of the court’s other 10 justices ruled that no objection to any member can be sustained because the court’s charter provides that members shall be of Gen. MacArthur’s choosing.
Kiyose had said he intended to object to each of the justices, but the ruling prevented him from pursuing the point.
The only defendant not entering a plea of innocent was Dr. Shumei Okawa, who was absent from the courtroom undergoing a sanity examination by Allied psychiatrists as a result of his slapping Tojo’s bald head in the court last week. Okawa, former director of the East Asia Economics Research Institute of Manchuria, is accused of instigating the Mukden incident which set off Japanese aggression.
Ex-war minister silenced
Sadao Araki, former general and war minister, was the first to plead. He stood stiffly and in clipped Japanese began a lengthy statement; but Webb cut him off, confining him to a simple plea of innocent.
The defense failed to get into the record his remarks, which were not translated, but what he said was: “During the 70 years of my life, I have not committed any act as charged. On the contrary–”
One by one, the one-time generals, diplomats and politicians asserted: “Not guilty to all charges.”
Tojo was the next to last called, but it was no different when he arose. He just denied his guilt and sat down.
After the last defendant registered his plea, Justice Webb announced the trial would start June 3.
Defense protests
Defense attorneys protested that the staff of American attorneys to be assigned to individual defendants were still en route from the United States.
Webb replied that defense evidence would not be presented for a month after the prosecution completed its case and that he considered the interval sufficient.
The court president also held that the American defense staff of eight and the Tokyo bar now available was sufficient to conduct the protest against the court’s jurisdiction next Monday.
Kiyose already has contended that, under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, war crimes can be charged only to persons who violated international law after the outbreak of hostilities and that the 11-nation court therefore cannot try high government officials who held their posts before the war. The indictments go back to Japanese activities In Manchuria as early as 1928.
The Evening Star (May 7, 1946)
Matsuoka medical probe will be asked by Keenan
TOKYO (AP) – Joseph B. Keenan, chief prosecutor of Japanese war criminals, said today he planned to ask for a medical examination to determine if Yosuke Matsuoka, ailing former foreign minister, is strong enough to stand trial.
Special considerations for Matsuoka, once Japanese chief delegate to the League of Nations, were asked yesterday by his defense counsel after his former secretary predicted Matsuoka would die before the end of the trials.
The psychiatric examination of Dr. Shumei Okawa, who slapped former Premier Tojo on the head at the arraignments, was scheduled to start today.
Arguments on the defense challenge of the International Military Tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear testimony on “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” will be resumed Monday.
The Evening Star (May 13, 1946)
Japs’ counsel contends country didn’t give up unconditionally
TOKYO (AP) – Argument that Japan did not surrender unconditionally and does not have to obey every Allied command was presented today to the Far East Military Tribunal by the chief defense counsel for Japan’s major war criminals.
Attorney Ichiro Kiyose’s challenge that the court lacks authority to try the 28 defendants on 55 counts was taken under advisement as the tribunal adjourned until tomorrow morning.
The Allies’ chief prosecutor, Joseph B. Keenan, labeled Kiyose’s argument as the “height of absurdity” and offered documentary evidence that Japan’s surrender was “utterly without condition.”
Kiyose said that in giving the tribunal jurisdiction over crimes against peace and crimes against humanity “Gen. MacArthur is exercising authority which he does not possess and the Japanese people are not bound to obey that order.”
Japan’s top statesmen, Kiyose said, agreed to surrender in the belief they would not be prosecuted as war criminals.
The attorney declared that in the surrender last September, Japan recognized that she would obey orders and directives of the Allied powers but only those in accordance with the Potsdam declaration of last July.
Mr. Keenan, in contending the surrender of Japan was “utterly and entirely without condition,” declared that examination of Japanese communications delivered to the Swiss government at the time of surrender would show it was without condition.
He turned to the surrender ultimatum prepared by the Allies at the Potsdam conference for further support for his argument.
From paragraph 13, he read: “We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces…”
The Evening Star (May 16, 1946)
Fihelly is named to prosecute Tojo as top war criminal
By W. G. Pollard
John W. Fihelly, who is on leave of absence from the United States attorney’s office in the trials of Japanese war criminals, has been designated prosecutor of the former Japanese premier, Hideki Tojo, his associates have learned.
Mr. Fihelly was named for the special job of prosecuting Tojo by Joseph B. Keenan, former assistant attorney general, who is chief counsel for the criminal trials in Japan.
Through Mr. Fihelly’s friends it was learned that he has questioned Tojo in the Sugamo Prison, Tokyo, many times, and reports the former premier to be in excellent health and to possess a keen mind as well as a sense of humor.
Mr. Fihelly informed his friends here that rumors reaching the United States that Tojo suffers from amnesia or has been feigning amnesia are erroneous.
Tojo is considered a principal defendant among top Japanese charged with crimes in connection with the war. Following the fall of Japan, when Tojo was about to be arrested by American military authorities he attempted suicide by shooting.
Mr. Fihelly recited an amusing incident in which Tojo inquired as to the meaning of the slang, “hubba, hubba.” He was told it was equivalent to “hurry, hurry.”
Tojo is then reported to have stated: “Ah, so. Very interesting. Often the guards here prod me in the ribs and say ‘hubba hubba.’ I thought it meant ‘remember Pearl Harbor.’”