The World War II Chronicles

by William Craig

  When his wife begged him not to do anything rash, he promised her that he would keep himself ready for testifying to the American authorities. Yet the days went by and no one appeared from MacArthur’s headquarters. It was rumored that the Japanese leaders were being given time to kill themselves and save the Allies the trouble of dealing with them.

  On September 10, reporters visited the old man in his garden. They sat and talked with him of the war and his plans for the future. At first he was rather curt, but then became quite friendly. After complaining about Allied bombers’ damage to his property—specifically his pine trees—he told them that he alone was responsible for the conflict and would accept full blame. He made it clear, however, that he did not think that he was a war criminal, explaining: “There is a difference between leading a nation in a war which it believes right and just and being a war criminal.” When the correspondents left, Tojo was in a pleasant mood, and examined their jeep with great interest. He had never seen one before. As they drove off he waved goodbye to them.

  The next day Tojo’s time ran out. When orders were cut at Eighth Army Headquarters in Yokohama to pick up men deemed responsible for the war, his name was on the list. A throng of correspondents rushed out to Setagaya to be on hand for his arrest; the first of them arrived at about 1:00 P.M.

  Tojo’s house was in an expensive neighborhood. Placed on a grassy slope, it was flanked on one side by open fields used for farming. To the rear, Fujiyama could be seen some fifty miles to the west. Bombing raids had caused some damage to the area, and an outbuilding on the property had gone up in flames months before.

  Tojo was at home with his wife and a contingent of Kempei Tai policemen who were there to protect him from Japanese attempts on his life. As correspondents swarmed over the grass outside, Tojo remained behind his study window, to the left of the front door, and ignored them.

  They were waiting for a Counterintelligence Corps unit to arrive from Yokohama. As they stood in the hot sun, some of the reporters got thirsty and asked Tojo’s servants to find some beer or something stronger to drink. Still Tojo remained out of sight. Presently he called for his wife and told her to get away from the house. Despite her apprehensions, Mrs. Tojo respected his wish and left by the back door for a neighbor’s property. Tojo locked his study door and continued to wait.

  At four o’clock a six-man CIC team, led by Major Paul Kraus, arrived at the house. Kraus pounded on the locked front door and demanded to see Tojo. A Kempei Tai man inside gave the message to the general, who answered that he would speak only to those in charge. When they were told this, Kraus and his men stood at the front door waiting, undecided as to the next step.

  Tojo himself took it. He opened the study window, leaned out, and said, “I am General Tojo.” A photographer snapped his picture. The flash infuriated him. Incensed, Tojo slammed the window shut. Kraus swore. Minutes later, Tojo again opened the window. On the lawn, a reporter looked up and said, “This is beginning to look like a balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.” Tojo asked if Kraus had the authority to arrest him. Kraus told the interpreter to tell Tojo that he was there to take him into Yokohama. That was enough for Tojo, who disappeared from view. He quickly picked up a .32 pistol which his son-in-law, Hidemasa Koga, had used to kill himself on the day the war ended. Tojo knelt in a chair and aimed the gun at the mark on his chest.

  At 4:17 P.M., those outside the house were startled by a gunshot. Kraus and his men broke down the front door and then the door to the study. Furniture piled against it was shoved aside as the mob crowded in.

  Tojo, still held the revolver in his right hand. It was pointed at Kraus, who said, “Drop it.” Tojo then slumped into the chair behind him, and the revolver fell to the floor. His shirt was open and a gaping wound showed just below the left nipple. His eyes closed and he began to sweat. At 4:29, still conscious, he asked for water and was given some by an aide. When he wanted more, an American officer refused because of his condition.

  The bullet had inflicted a sucking wound. As Tojo breathed, air was taken in and discharged through the hole in his chest. While the correspondents shouted and pushed, an enormous gush of blood shot out from the wound and flew across the room. The boisterous journalists, many of whom had landed at beachheads and seen the fury of the Pacific war, showed little sympathy. The reporters vied with each other for stories. It was as though Tojo were already dead.

  “Look at that yellow bastard. He didn’t even have the guts to use a knife.”

  “Tojo has earned himself a Purple Heart.”

  Souvenir hunters went right to work. Someone cut a piece out of the general’s riding breeches as he lay in them. Others dipped handkerchiefs in the flowing blood to keep as mementos. One reporter took his cigarette case. The cigarettes inside, of Japanese make, bore the brand name “Hope.” Tojo never moved. He was still conscious but did not speak. As the bedlam increased, he groaned once or twice but that was all. His face was turning gray.

  Across the street, Mrs. Tojo had watched the scene from her neighbor’s lawn. Dressed in gardener’s clothes and wearing a sun hat, she had been peering through the hedges at the reporters. When the gunshot sounded, she got on her knees and prayed that her husband would not suffer before he died. She cried softly in the grass for over a half hour, then went away from the street and from the horror in her own house.

  At about the same time, CIC Major Kraus went out to get an American doctor. While he was gone, a Japanese physician appeared and had the general lifted from the chair to a sofa bed in the same room. He was covered with a homemade patch quilt and examined. At this point another souvenir was taken. The bullet that had passed through Tojo’s body was dug out of the back of the red armchair and went into the pocket of one of the reporters, Harry Brundidge.

  The doctor was immediately convinced that the general was beyond help, and he simply placed two bandages over the wounds, front and back. The CIC agents insisted that he do whatever he could to help the victim. While the physician fought to save Tojo’s life, correspondents fought to release the story. There was only one telephone, in a hall in the back of the house. One reporter got it and held it while others fired information at him.

  Little things were being flashed to the world. A fly trapped in the room was fascinated by Tojo’s sweaty bald head. It settled on his brow and walked up and down, over and back. It stopped to consider the terrain, then marched again through the wrinkles and folds. Everyone in the room was fascinated. Now and then it would take off and circle the room, but inexorably it would glide back onto the shiny pate and walk through the wet surface. The fly achieved instant fame.

  An enterprising American newsman ran a quarter of a mile down the road to another phone and had reports on Tojo’s condition relayed to him by a Japanese messenger. By mistake he flashed word to the wire service that Tojo was dead. Fortunately, he was able to rescind the story before it was released to the world.

  Inside the house one man cared very much for the stricken figure. Tojo’s secretary burst through the crowd of men and cradled the general’s head in his arms. He moaned softly as he gazed down into the ashen face. The American reporters looked at him curiously but were not moved. The mad scramble continued.

  At 6:24 P.M., an American physician attached to the First Cavalry Division walked into the bedlam and took charge. Dr. James Johnson consulted briefly with his Japanese counterpart, then went to work. General Tojo spoke to him through the interpreter and asked that he be left alone to die. Johnson refused. As he began administering plasma, Tojo’s pulse quickened.

  Cigarette smoke hung in bluish gray layers over the head of the wounded man. People watched his chest heaving and falling and made bets on whether he would draw another breath. While the crowd milled and shouted, an enterprising photographer for Yank magazine stood outside the house and looked in through the side window. He furtively reached his right arm into the room and clutched an object from a table. It was a shiny sword, one of Tojo’s own. The camera
man stuffed it quickly down the front of his pants and hobbled off toward the road and freedom. A bored CIC man let him get just so far, then ambled over and asked for the souvenir sticking stiffly inside his trousers. The embarrassed thief pulled out the sword and surrendered it.

  More photographers had arrived, and they created more chaos. Flash bulbs popped, stepladders were brought in to get better shooting angles, requests were made to shift the body of the victim lying helplessly under the multicolored quilt. Some asked that Tojo’s head be moved for better angle shots. His legs were crossed and recrossed as the insatiable cameras recorded the scene. His body was just a limp doll to position, an object to photograph.

  Correspondents took turns being photographed taking Tojo’s pulse. The confusion grew. One cameraman, on hearing that the wounded man was Tojo the “archfiend,” had to be restrained from punching him.

  Dr. Johnson labored on in the eye of this human hurricane. He gave the general morphine, sutured the wound front and back, bandaged him again, and let the plasma drain into his arm. Tojo’s condition improved noticeably and Johnson decided to take him to better medical facilities.

  He ordered him driven to a clearing station for more care. First he talked for nearly fifteen minutes to the newsmen, who wanted to know if the old bastard would make it. Then they rushed out to file the biggest story of the Occupation. Tojo left his home for the last time on a stretcher.

  General Eichelberger, the leader of the Eighth Army, went to observe him later that night. Tojo tried to raise his head, but fell back and whispered, “I am dying. I’m sorry to have given you so much trouble.”

  Eichelberger retorted, “Do you mean tonight or for the last few years?”

  Tojo mumbled, “Tonight.” Then he offered to turn over his sword to Eichelberger. The American general already had it.

  Eichelberger issued orders for Tojo to receive the best possible treatment. It was his responsibility to keep the Japanese leader alive for whatever trials were being planned for the war criminals.

  A call went out for blood type B. Whole blood was needed since Tojo had already lost nearly half his own. A mess sergeant named John Archinal was tapped for transfusion. Archinal was pleased at the chance: “I’d like to see him live so he gets his just due when he is tried. It would be too easy for him to come in here and pass out comfortably.” Archinal echoed the sentiments of most G.I.’s.

  In Tokyo that night, while Hideki Tojo lay ashen-faced in a United States Army hospital in Yokohama, his own people mocked him for the bungled suicide. As reports of his recovery were issued, they were greeted by a mixture of shame and derision from his countrymen.

  While Tojo fought to die and surgeons refused to let him, three people sat down to dinner in another suburb of Tokyo. One was a general, Field Marshal Gen Sugiyama, Army Chief of Staff at the time of Pearl Harbor. Though bald and afflicted with a permanently dropping right eyelid, he was a strikingly impressive figure. His wife of over thirty years sat near him. The other member of the group was Colonel Shinaji Kobayashi, the general’s devoted secretary. They conversed animatedly about the events of the last few days.

  For Sugiyama and his wife, it was a last meal together after a long and mutually enjoyable life. He planned to die the next day by his own hand. She was pleased. Though she loved him deeply, she felt that her husband, a senior member of the Imperial Army, owed it to the nation to atone for the defeat of Japan. She believed there was no other way to prove to the people that Sugiyama, an honorable man, felt sufficient remorse for the tragedy he helped cause.

  As they sipped sake wine and ate heartily from the table before them, the couple spoke of more pleasant days. Colonel Kobayashi, almost a member of the family, shared their recollections. The colonel was miserable at the thought that his superior would end his life within hours. As a confidant to the general, he knew the mental struggle Sugiyama had gone through in the past weeks. He also knew the tremendous pressures put upon the old man by his wife, who felt so strongly about personal honor.

  Kobayashi had watched sadly as the devoted couple clashed over the subject of suicide. The contest of minds had started on the day the Emperor broadcast his solemn declaration of surrender.

  Mrs. Sugiyama was visiting relatives to the south of Tokyo when she heard the dreaded news. She immediately rushed back to the capital to be with her husband. She fully anticipated that the general would kill himself and she wanted to be with him in his last hour.

  When she reached the city, Sugiyama greeted her warmly and told her that he had been admonished by the Emperor to do everything he could to speed demobilization of the troops around the city. After General Anami’s death, the Emperor had asked the senior officers to forget their personal feelings and devote themselves to the nation in the difficult days ahead.

  His wife was shocked. For two days she brooded. A normally pleasant, even-dispositioned lady, she usually radiated a genuine warmth to those around her. Plump and small, she reminded everyone of a smiling Buddha. But the woman who greeted her husband when he came home on the night of the seventeenth of August was far from even-tempered. She was almost hysterical as she berated him.

  “When are you going to commit suicide?” she asked in a shrill voice. The general looked closely at her. Her eyes were wide with excitement, her features flushed with anger. He was dumbfounded.

  “I have a responsibility to the Emperor right now. It’s important that I stay alive to serve him.”

  “It is more important that you atone for the surrender,” she cried.

  The couple argued heatedly over the question of his death, and later went to bed in a strained atmosphere.

  Each night thereafter the argument continued. After the servants had gone to bed, the woman pressed her husband for an answer, and he put off the question. Neighbors noticed that Mrs. Sugiyama was becoming more distraught, more wild-eyed. She no longer smiled. She pouted in frustration.

  On the seventh day, she confronted the general once more in his bedroom.

  “When are you going to commit hara-kiri?” she repeated. The general braced for another tirade as she continued, “I’ll die before you if you don’t go through with it.”

  Sugiyama was shattered. His wife was goading him, taunting him with the prospect of her own suicide. It was the last blow. He gazed steadily at her, then spoke softly: “All right, I’ll do it, but you must promise not to think of doing the same thing.”

  Mrs. Sugiyama smiled at him for the first time in days and then bowed deeply. They went to sleep beside each other.

  On the next day, Sugiyama was a witness to the death of General Seiichi Tanaka, and his resolve to die was strengthened by his friend’s suicide. With his mind firmly made up, he approached his last military task with great fervor. The First Army around Tokyo was completely equipped with weapons, and it was imperative to withdraw the units from the area to be occupied by the Americans in a few short days. Sugiyama plunged gratefully into the assignment.

  A thought kept nagging at him. A few days before, he had seen his wife sewing material for two white ceremonial kimonos, normally used only in suicide rituals. Though he remembered her recent threat, he hesitated to believe that she would follow through with it. Still it bothered him. The general tried to put it out of his mind, but the memory of the two kimonos returned constantly.

  On the fifth of September, General Sugiyama went to a most important appointment. After the Americans landed at Atsugi and Yokosuka, he was summoned to the headquarters of Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger, commander of the Eighth United States Army. There he would formally surrender his army.

  His first reaction was to refuse, not because he balked at turning over his command, but rather because Eichelberger was beneath him in rank. Sugiyama considered it an insult to have to treat with a junior officer. Only the cahn persuasion of his secretary, Kobayashi, prevented a major incident. The colonel told him repeatedly that it was not intended as a slur against him that Eichelberger was in fact the l
egitimate representative of the American forces in the Tokyo area.

  Even on the way to Yokohama, Sugiyama grumbled about the alleged slight. But he went into the conference room and bowed to the inevitable.

  Eichelberger was a courtly man, a gentleman in a cruel business. Realizing the turmoil that Sugiyama must be suffering, he treated him with courtesy and dignity. The Japanese was charmed and grateful. Eichelberger’s generous conduct earned him Sugiyama’s almost slavish loyalty in the days ahead.

  As the two ended their discussions of the steps to be taken in withdrawing Japanese forces away from Tokyo, Eichelberger observed, “I’m sorry we have to meet under such circumstances.” Sugiyama nodded gratefully and withdrew.

  The next six days were pleasant ones for him. Kept busy by the delicate task of moving his men out of the path of advancing occupation troops, he worked diligently to cooperate with the Americans. His home life had returned to normal. His wife was again pleasant and thoughtful. Their last days together were serene. They spoke no more of suicide.

  By the eleventh of September, the last of the Japanese forces had gone north of the Tone River. No incidents had been reported between the opposing armies. Sugiyama had helped finish a most difficult task and now his work was ended.

  That evening he invited Kobayashi to dinner. The news of Tojo’s attempted suicide had filtered in and the three deplored the bungled attempt. They also talked about the list of war criminals issued that day by MacArthur’s headquarters.

  Sugiyama wondered if he was included. His career had mirrored the rise of the Imperial Japanese Army to dominance in Japanese governmental affairs. As a leader of the conservative section of the General Staff, he embraced and sometimes advocated policies which had led the nation down the road to war. Sugiyama had been a strong proponent of the “pacification” of China. It was rumored that the Emperor had lost faith in him in that period because the general assured him that the China situation would be resolved quickly.