Word: tojo
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...Tokyo last week, after 18 months of legal bickering and monotonous reading of documents, the drowsy courtroom in the old War Ministry building came to life. The chief characters of the climactic scenes were Hideki ("The Razor") Tojo and Ryukichi ("The Monster") Tanaka. Neither expected to live long. War Criminal Tojo expected to be hanged by the victors, whose newly written laws he boldly challenged; Tanaka expected to be assassinated by the vanquished, whose old, unwritten laws he had betrayed...
...William Webb, chairman of the International Military Tribunal, Far East, called it "the greatest trial in history." It was likely that history, at least as taught in Japan, would remember chief defendant Hideki Tojo longer than chief prosecution witness Tanaka-and longer than anything else about the trial that was to establish a Japanese conspiracy against peace and humanity...
...when the time drew near for Hideki Tojo to take the stand last week, the atmosphere changed. It meant that the end was in sight. The defendants ate less. They strained for a look at Fujiyama. To see the sacred mountain at year's end meant luck...
When the day came, the gallery, which had been empty for months, was jammed. Tojo walked to the stand with the correct aplomb of the model prisoner and the unearthly smugness of the samurai. His court-appointed lawyer, George Blewett of Philadelphia, started to read Tojo's 64,000-word affidavit, which Tojo had rewritten four times in one year. Tojo himself sat back calmly. Around his right middle finger was tied a piece of string-a reminder to himself, he explained later, to keep his quick temper in check. Among his fellow defendants there was a stir...
Through Blewett's voice, Hideki Tojo spoke for all the defendants, and, in a sense, for millions.of Japanese. His defense was offense. He challenged not only the victors' right to try him and his fellows: he challenged the U.S. version of history. Japan, he said, had been forced into...