GEN. TOJO'S ATTITUDE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 62, 11 September 1945, Page 7

GEN. TOJO'S ATTITUDE

RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR

Rec. 9.20 a.m. TOKIO, Sept. 10. General To jo, who was Premier of Japan when she entered the war, declared in an interview that the American victors could fix the responsibility for starting the war, but history might disagree. Tojoi who is still living in a luxurious home, guarded by gendarmes, on ■Hie outskirts of Tokio, refused flatly to discuss whether he expected to be tried as a war criminal or what his defence would be, but spoke in moods which ranged from steely-eyed impassivity to hearty laughter. A Japanese politican had stated earlier that Tojo expected to be tried as a war criminal, whereupon he would accuse the late President Roosevelt as being the world's top war criminal and then commit harakiri: Tojo sharply refused to discuss this. His whole attitude was expressed in this statement: "Keal soldiers fight to the finish on the field. War ends when peace is declared. Each side respects the enemy who fights hard and cleanly, so General Mac Arthur has the

respect of myself as well as of the Japanese people." Tojo said that he and his family narrowly escaped death on May 25 j when Super-Fortresses ringed his j house with flames. "You burned my three best pine trees," said the man whose armies destroyed most of Asia. It is said that while he was Premier Tojo amassed a fortune, mostly from the illicit opium trade in China, where high generals carried the drug from north China to Shanghai. | No. 1 WAS CRIMINAL. A former high-placed politician who visited. Tojo said that the place was surrounded by police and gendarmes. The informant asked that his name be withheld, because if people knew he had visited Tojo they would kill him. This, says a correspondent, aptly exemplifies the attitude towards the general, whom most Japanese frankly name as the No. 1 war criminal. Tojo, though disgraced, made a final gesture to prevent Japan from surrendering. The informant confirmed that one of the two conspirators who killed General Mori in an attempt to destroy the Emperor's surrender Rescript was Major Kogo, Tojo's son-in-law. Both assassins committed suicide at Imperial headquarters. The informant said that when he mentioned Kogo's suicide Tojo's wife said: "Yes, he did the brave and honourable thing." It is evident that, under the close family relationships in Japan, Kogo's action was directed to Tojo,