Posted on 06/14/2021 6:50:35 AM PDT by Rebelbase
TOKYO (AP) — Until recently, the location of executed wartime Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s remains was one of World War II’s biggest mysteries in the nation he once led.
Now, a Japanese university professor has revealed declassified U.S. military documents that appear to hold the answer..
The documents show the cremated ashes of Tojo, one of the masterminds of the Pearl Harbor attack, were scattered from a U.S. Army aircraft over the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, south of Tokyo.
It was a tension-filled, highly secretive mission, with American officials apparently taking extreme steps meant to keep Tojo’s remains, and those of six others executed with him, away from ultra-nationalists looking to glorify them as martyrs. The seven were hanged for war crimes just before Christmas in 1948, three years after Japan’s defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
That was still a respectful disbursement of his ashes.
ping.
Sounds a bit hyperbolic. Very few Americans cared or considered it a mystery.
The Soviet Union did similar things with Hitler’s remains. Stalin allegedly had Hitler’s skull as a paperweight but blamed the West for Hitler’s ‘escape’.
Too bad, every war criminal/terrorist should have their ashes scattered in a sewage treatment plant.
Indeed, it was something he might have requested (sans the US military aircraft)
Recall Obama’s respectful burial at sea for Osama Bin Laden.
Yes. MacArthur set the tone of the occupation when he called the Emperor Hirohito to that first meeting in the Occupation HQ. In that famous photo released to the world, he wore his casual khakis, no hat, collar unbuttoned, towering above Hirohito, with his arms akimbo. It was a message to everyone in Japan - this guy now works for me.
When Tojo was in American captivity, a US Navy dentist worked on the ex-Prime Minister’s dentures. The dentist wanted to get back at Tojo a little. So he inscribed “Remember Pearl Harbor” on the dentures, in Morse code.
(To keep himself out of trouble, the dentist later ground down the message.)
https://visitpearlharbor.org/tojos-teeth-a-dentists-revenge/
Was a Japanese military leader’s plane shot down by American or allied forces?
Exactly. We came, we saw, we conquered. We dictated the terms and nothing was going to stop us.
I think the japanese war was the most annoying thing ever, and when I see today’s japanese acting like they are anything beyond annoying, I want to grind them “to a powder”.
An acquaintance worked in Japan a bit. He said the cities were sort of civilized, but as soon as you got in to the country, it was ignorant rice farmers and little manufacturers running businesses out of their garages, hammering spoons on a stone anvil.
They should have mailed his ashes to his momma! With a ribbon, of course!
>>Was a Japanese military leader’s plane shot down by American or allied forces?
Yes - Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - try googling ‘operation vengeance’ for more info.
Yes
“Get Yamamoto”
Operation Vengeance. One of the many great stories of the war in the Pacific
That was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor.
His plane was shot down on April 18, 1943 by a flight of 16 P-38 Lightning aircraft of the US Army Air Corps.
First LT Rex T Barbour fired the shots that brought down Yamamoto’s plane.
Yamamoto’s remains were found by Japanese searchers the next day. Supposedly his seat had detached from the plane and Yamamoto was found still strapped into it.
He had two 50 cal. wounds. One in the back and one that entered his left jaw and exited above his right eye.
His demise came about because American code breakers had broken the code and knew his itinerary.
Ironically Yamamoto never wanted to go to war with the US.
“I’m against war with the United States. But I am an officer of the Imperial Navy and a subject of His Majesty the Emperor.”
And he was realistic about what war with the US would mean.
“Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. We would have to march into Washington and sign the treaty in the White House.”
The Japanese model for war with western countries was the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. They figured that since the U.S. had little at stake in western Pacific, we would settle rather than fight a protracted war. Yamamoto, who had studied at Harvard and been naval attaché in Washington, knew better.
I have read that DC was willing to let the Japanese have the Philippines and some other islands/territories to stay out of a Pacific war, that FDR wanted war but war against the Germans.
Not sure there’s any truth to that.
I have also read that the Kaiser had been mulling plans to invade, take and hold NYC. The thinking was the US would give up the territory we acquired from Spain after the Spanish-American war just to get German troops off US soil because our army and navy were scattered out in the new territories.
Supposedly those plans were shelved by the outbreak of WW1.
Let’s see “the document.”. I don’t have any reason to believe any government official, ever.
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