In the early hours of December 23, 1948, several Japanese Class A war criminals dressed in prison uniforms were escorted down to a gallows by soldiers at the heavily guarded Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.
After the executioner nodded his name, the war criminals ascended the 13-step gallows, and the executioner named again. The soldiers then put black hoods on the war criminals one by one, and then put huge nooses around the necks of the war criminals.
With the order of the executioner, the baffle under the gallows was loosened. The war criminals instantly felt themselves stepping into the air, but they didn't fall because the noose hung around their necks!
The noose tightened rapidly, and the war criminals suddenly felt a terrible feeling of suffocation, and they began to struggle desperately! Trying to open your mouth to breathe again!
Of course, none of these efforts have been successful.
Soon, their hearts stopped beating and their consciousness began to blur. The struggle stopped, and the war criminals hung on the gallows like dead maggots...
Hideki Tojo, who attempted suicide
After Japan's formal surrender in September 1945, the Allies began to arrest and try Japanese war criminals who planned and waged war, as well as those who committed crimes in the war.
These Japanese war criminals are divided into three levels: A, B, and C, of whom 28 are on the list of Class A war criminals, who are the culprits in undermining peace and launching wars of aggression, and who are also high-level Japanese military and political leaders who hold decision-making power.
If according to the emotions of our ordinary people, people like these 28 people should all be executed, but the trial is a trial after all, the war criminals can appeal in addition to the defense, plus there is a Virgin Mary Indian judge who participates in the trial, who thinks about acquitting these people every day, so when the verdict was pronounced in November 1948, only 7 people were sentenced to hanging.
They were Hideki Tojo, Hiroshi Hirota, Kenji Toihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Shotaro Kimura, Ishigen Matsui, and Akira Muto.
At 9 p.m. on December 21, 1948, the notice of the execution reached the ears of seven war criminals, and the date of execution was set for 00:00 to 0:35 a.m. on the 23rd.
The last handwriting of the war criminals
On the last day of their lives, they wrote letters to their families and friends, found a Specially Equipped Japanese Mage in the prison to "repent", and several people also said goodbye to each other.
A common feature of the 7 war criminals on their last day was that their appetites were not as good as before, and some war criminals did not even eat their hometown meals in Japan.
It turned out that this group of goods that shouted every day to make other Japanese people "loyal to the emperor" would end up thinking about tea and dinner in the face of death!
After 11:30 p.m. on December 22, four war criminals, Kenji Doihara, Ishigen Matsui, Hideki Tojo, and Akira Muto, were first brought from their separate cells to a Buddhist hall in the prison to listen to the chanting of japanese masters.
After listening to the scriptures, according to the Western custom of execution, war criminals had to drink wine before they could go on the road. Hideki Tojo asked, "Is there any Japanese sake?"
The Japanese mage said before the guard spoke: "General, there is no Japanese sake here, so let's use this wine to satisfy your desire to drink a cup!"
Saying this, the Japanese mage took up the paper cup and brought the wine to Hideki Tojo's mouth, and the other three war criminals also drank their own severed head wine.
After drinking, the Americans asked if they had any other requests, and one of the war criminals said he wanted to eat the last bite of Japanese food.
But where on the big night to make Japanese food for this group of dying people? However, the Americans still brought them rice, roasted fish, bread, coffee and other foods.
The war criminals only took the rice and wolfed it into their stomachs, and the Americans on the side couldn't help but laugh secretly when they saw it: These people who sent food during the day didn't want to eat, and they wanted to eat it before the gallows, and these Japanese people were really interesting!
Class A war criminal
The wine was drunk, the food was eaten, and it was time for the war criminals to go on the road, but they were not. Hideki Tojo suddenly took the lead in shouting the slogan "Long live the Emperor."
This slogan was not shouted by the Japanese at that time, but since Japan's defeat and surrender, the Americans rode on the emperor's head, and the shouting was less.
Now Hideki Tojo shouted again, and the war criminals next to him also shouted when they saw this situation, and the Japanese mage next to him looked very nervous, but the Americans did not seem to care, but just urged that the time came.
As a result, 2 prison officers and 8 American soldiers, guarding 4 war criminals, rushed to the gallows under the leadership of 1 Japanese officer on duty, 1 American priest and 1 Japanese mage.
At the entrance to the gallows, an officer holding a roster made a roll call, and the four men answered in turn. At this time, Hideki Tojo handed the rosary beads he had been hiding in his hand to the Japanese mage, instructed him to give it to his family, and shook hands with the mage to say goodbye.
After that, the four war criminals boarded the gallows. Directly behind the last test, a thick and strong noose was placed around their necks.
At 01:30 a.m. on December 23, with the opening of the pedals under his feet and the fall of the war criminal's body, the originally bent noose rope was immediately straightened, and the final moment of the four war criminals arrived.
They began to struggle hard, but to no avail, and then they lost their breath one by one. According to U.S. military medical statistics, which were individually assigned to each war criminal, Toihara struggled for 6 minutes, Hideki Tojo for 9 minutes, Muto Akira for 10 minutes, and Matsui Ishigen for 12 minutes and 30 seconds!
This war criminal named Matsui Ishigen was one of the perpetrators of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937!
After confirming that they had completely lost their breath, the soldiers unloaded the bodies of the four Class A war criminals from the gallows and put them into the bags they had prepared.
Then, three other war criminals who had been "waiting for a long time" were also brought in, namely Hiroshi Hirota, Seishiro Itagaki, and Shotaro Kimura.
From 00:20 onwards, the three of them and the others who were one step ahead of them went through the same process and then went on their way one after another.
These 3 war criminals were obviously "hard-wired" than the previous gang, Itagaki struggled on the noose for 12 minutes and 30 seconds, Hirota was 14 minutes and 30 seconds, and Kimura, as the last class A war criminal to be executed, was not pronounced dead until 15 minutes and 30 seconds later.
Their bodies were also packed into bags. At this point, the death penalties of 7 Class A war criminals have all been executed.
Each of these war criminals, who had just been hanged, bore unshirkable responsibility for the war of aggression launched by Japan.
But it is this group of war maniacs who have committed heinous crimes and regarded the lives of hundreds of millions of people as grass and mustard, who are still praying to the Buddha after being condemned as war criminals, and are still muttering Buddhist prayers in their mouths when they put on the noose around their necks!
Of course, this group of people praying to the Buddha is not repentance for the crimes they have committed, they will only regret why they did not win the war.
Matsui Ishigen, who was primarily responsible for the Nanjing Massacre, left a desperate poem on the last day before the execution, the last sentence of which reads, "Here you should have the courage to be sincere."
This kind of sincere courage is indeed quite sincere to Japan, but for those Chinese who died tragically under the butcher's knife of the Japanese army, this kind of thing is not as good as a bubble of.
Before his death, Kimura Toshitaro, who had carried out "sweeping" in China and carried out massacres in Burma, entrusted his wife to tell him that as a cornerstone of long-term peace, he died happily, and that a transcendent death was eternal life. How could such remarks ever have the slightest hint of repentance?
The only one who could barely perform was Itagaki Seishiro, the murderer who plotted the puppet state of Manchukuo. He left his last words, hoping that Japan would make peace with other countries and achieve reconstruction, and he also "prayed for the prosperity of China and Great Korea." But that's all there is to it.
Regardless of whether these Class A war criminals repented or not, or how much water was mixed in their repentance, they were eventually executed on the gallows! This can also be regarded as some consolation to the undead!
Sugamo Prison, where convicts of decisive battles are held and executed
Now that the death penalty has been carried out, what should be done with the bodies of these Class A war criminals? According to records, at about 2 a.m. on the same day, a large truck containing the bodies of seven war criminals drove out of the Sugamo Prison where the execution was carried out.
Subsequently, the bodies were taken to a cemetery in Yokohama City that was managed by the U.S. Military, but instead of being buried here, the bodies were rushed to a crematorium called Kubo-san.
Around 8 a.m., the bodies were cremated in an incinerator, and the ashes of several people were then placed on the altar. The U.S. military was extra careful in cleaning up the ashes, leaving no residue for Japan.
Then, an American major named Frison flew to the Pacific Ocean, about 48 kilometers from the coast, dumped all the ashes into the sea, and finally threw the altar down.
"Tomb of the Seven Martyrs"
The reason for this is to prevent some Japanese militarists from worshipping the cemeteries or ashes of war criminals as holy places and holy relics.
However, the "thoughtful" Japanese later did not know where to get a pile of ashes, saying that it was the execution of 7 Class A war criminals, and built the so-called "Tomb of the Seven Martyrs" for worship.
As a result, many years later, americans said that the ashes of war criminals had long been scattered cleanly, and they did not know what the Japanese had worshipped for decades. This is certainly a joke, but people should be more vigilant than laughing.
Content Source:
Zhu Fangqin, "The Secret Story of the Execution of Class A War Criminal Hideki Tojo", Golden Autumn, No. 8, 2005
(Japanese) "Asahi Shimbun" Tokyo Trial Reporters Group, translated by Ji Jia: "Tokyo Trial", Hebei People's Publishing House, 1988
"Japanese Class A War Criminals, What They Said Before They Were Hanged", New Legends, No. 34, 2019, and so on