KONOYE COMMITS SUICIDE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 57, 17 December 1945, Page 3

KONOYE COMMITS SUICIDE

FORMER PRIME MINISTER LISTED AS WAR CRIMINAL (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) TOKIO, Dec. 16. Prince Konoye, a former Prime Minister, has committed suicide. General MacArthur’s Headquarters reported that Prince Konoye poisoned himself on Friday night He was due to enter Sugamo Prison at midnight on Saturday as a suspected war criminal. Princess Konoye found the body.

Prince Konoye entertained relatives and close friends, including many high in social and political life, at his lavish modern residence on Saturday evening. He retired to his bedroom at 2 a.m. Friends said he seemed normal and gave no indications of his intention.

An American physician examined the body and confiscated a phial. A crowd of Japanese watching war criminal suspects surrendering at the gates of Sugama Prison appeared shocked when told that Prince Konoye was reported to have committed suicide. Prince Konoye left a note saying he was concerned over, committing certain errors in handling State affairs after the outbreak of the China incident. He declared he felt especially responsible for the outcome of the incident regarding which lie tried to achieve an understanding with America in the hope of solving the China problem. The note added: “I cannot, however, stand the humiliation of being apprehended and tried by an Amedican court.”

Kido, Emperor Hirohito’s close adviser during the war, surrendered at the prison. The war criminal suspects who surrendered to-day included Viscount Okachi, former head of the Riken industries and adviser to General Hideki Tojo’s Cabinet; Count Saki, Minister of Agriculture in the 1940 Cabinet, also director of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association; Shigeo Odate, the first Mayor of occupied Singapore, also former Home Minister; Vice-Admiral Godo, a member of two Japanese War Cabinets; and Hiroshi Oshima, wartime Japanese Ambassadod to Berlin.

All arrived at the prison with a retinue of servants and members of their families, carrying heavy bundles of bedding and personal belongings.

Failure to Settle Strikes Allied Headquarters demanded from the Japanese Government an explanation of its failure to settle strikes, also to produce* additional labour for the coal mines in North Japan to cope with the fuel shortage threatening to paralyse transportation and industry unless remedied within a few weeks.. Headquarters described as unsatisfactory the measures taken by the Japanese Government to comply with the directive on December 6 calling for increased production, and added that no concrete measures had yet been taken to combat the situation. The Chinese and Koreans who worked the mines during the war have not been replaced. The newspaper “Nippon Sangyo Keizai” reports increasing labour unrest resulting from the fall in the purchasing power of the yen. There were 40 major strikes in October and November 'involving 16,000 workers. Twenty factories have been closed since ithe surrender owing to sabotage by the workers. State Shintoism Abolished With the expressed aim of freeing .the Japanese from direct or indirect compulsion to believe a manufactured religion, General MacArthur has ordered that State Shintoism be abolished. The directive demands: (1) The -withdrawal of all Government control of State Shinto.

(2) The purging of the militaristic and ultranationalistic ideology which preaches ancestor worship and deiAes the Emperor. This embraces the doetrine that the Empei’or is superior to the heads of other States and the Japanese superior ito other peoples through, ancestral descent or special origin. , (3) The removal of Shinto teachings from the schools.

The directive abolishes the Home Ministry’s shrine bureau which exercised jurisdiction over all shrines and abolishes written Nature-loving rituals and priests of State Shinto. Allied officers emphasise that the involves State Shintoism, but does not affect the Shinto sect, of which there were 17,000,000 adherents in 1941. They added that it is not an attempt to dictate religious beliefs. The correspondent of the Associated Press comments that the entire population are considered to be members of State Shinto, including 45,000,000 Buddhists and 315,000 Christians. Brigadier-General K. R. Dyke, chief of the informaltion and education section, describes the development of State Shinto as a masterly job of promotion. He added that the directive liberates the Japanese from the compulsory support of an. ideology which contributed to the war guilt, defeat, suffering, deprivation, and their present deplorable condition. The Emperor is still spiritual head of Japan and can continue to worship at the grand shrine of Ise, but canixot in future be accompanied thither by State officials. Brigadier-General Dyke said that au creeds henceforth are on the same legal basis.