Word: tojo
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After the seizure of Hideki Tojo (TIME, Sept. 17), who bungled his attempt at suicide,* counter-intelligence officers began rounding up the other 39 on MacArthur's first list of criminals wanted...
...others, Welfare Minister Chikahiko Koizumi and Education Minister Kunihiko Hashida of Tojo's Pearl Harbor Cabinet (and four unlisted officials) succeeded in killing themselves. Admiral Shigetaro Shimada told a nervous U.S. officer: "Be quiet-I don't suicide." Many surrendered voluntarily, either to U.S. officers or Japanese police. At week's end only ten were still at large...
...first list had been hastily compiled, apparently under pressure from the U.S. press. It included the name of Tojo and all his Cabinet (a few of whom might win acquittal) and assorted criminals at large: Lieut. General Masaharu Homma (the Bataan death march), Mark Lewis Streeter (U.S. civilian from Wake who wrote propaganda for Radio Tokyo), Jose Laurel (Filipino quisling), Joseph Meisinger (Gestapo "butcher of Warsaw...
Meanwhile, Japanese complained that Tokyo newspapers had not published war criminal lists. There was bitter derision for Tojo's suicide failure and favorable comment on those officials who gave themselves up. When Tokyo papers (on direction from MacArthur's headquarters) published accounts of atrocities suffered by U.S. prisoners, Japanese asked that they be allowed to arrest, try and punish their own criminals...
...military hospital, Tojo explained why he had tried to kill himself with a pistol instead of by traditional harakiri: he had had no aide (kaishaku) to stand by and strike off his head with a two-handed sword after he had slit his abdomen with a ceremonial dagger. In some recent Japanese pistol suicides a kaishaku with a pistol stood by to blow out the suicide's brains. Said Tojo: "I did not want to mess up my head...