According to the Associated Press reported on June 14, a Japanese scholar recently said that from a US military document, it was found that 7 Class A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, who were executed in the Tokyo trial after World War II, were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. In response to this news, Hideki Tojo's great-grandson said that he hoped to go to the place where the ashes were scattered to offer flowers.
Hideki Tojo acquitted himself at the November 1948 Tokyo Trials (infographic)
According to the Associated Press, a number of Japanese media said last week that Hiroaki Takazawa, a full-time lecturer at the Faculty of Production Engineering at Nihon University, has been studying war court issues for many years, and after several years of verification and evaluation, he has disclosed some declassified documents found by the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland in the United States in 2018, which for the first time disclosed the disposal of the remains of war criminals such as Hideki Tojo.
Nihon University Lecturer Hiroaki Takasawa (AP Photo)
According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency, one of the files Takazawa saw was dated December 23, 1948, the day seven war criminals were executed, and the other was dated January 4, 1949. The head of the scene, Major Luther Frierson of the U.S. Army, recorded in detail the execution of the war criminals and the disposal of the bodies.
Declassified archives discovered by Hiroaki Takasawa (Associated Press photo)
According to archival records, after midnight on December 23, 1948, Hideki Tojo and seven others were hanged at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. The van carrying the body departed from the prison at 2:10 a.m. and arrived about an hour and a half later at the U.S. Quartermaster Office cemetery registration team stationed in Yokohama City, where it was taken to the crematorium. At 8:05 a.m., the bodies of 7 people were taken directly from the wagon to the crematorium; the ashes were loaded into the columbarium and transported to the Eighth Army liaison airfield.
Hideki Tojo hears the verdict at the scene of the Tokyo Trial on November 12, 1948 (infographic)
Frison said he boarded a plane and scattered ashes over the Pacific Ocean, about 48 kilometers east of Yokohama. Frison said they carefully cleaned the crematorium without leaving a single piece of ashes. Siebold, director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Allied Forces General Command in Japan, who witnessed the execution, later wrote in his book that this method was adopted in order to prevent Class A war criminals from leaving a cemetery and being worshipped by Japanese ultra-nationalists.
Hideki Tojo's great-grandson Hidetoshi Tojo (Associated Press photo)
Hideki Tojo's great-grandson Hidetoshi Tojo was interviewed by The Associated Press. Born in 1972, Hidetoshi Tojo is a writer whose research interests include Shrines and Traditional Japanese Culture. He said the loss of bones had long been a humiliation for the Tojo family, which had lost loved ones, and he was relieved by the revelations. He said: "If his body is scattered in Japanese territorial waters... I think he's still a little lucky. If there are further details about the location of the body, he said, "I would like to invite my friend to present flowers to him." ”
On August 13, 2015, Hidetoshi Tojo visited the Yasukuni Shrine (data map)
The Associated Press reported that even without leaving his ashes, Hideki Tojo's tablet was placed at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where 2.5 million Japanese war veterans, including convicted war criminals, were regularly visited by the public and Conservative Japanese lawmakers, including former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
(Editor: YZM)