[Column] Japanese war criminals and their offspring

Posted on : 2007-07-24 12:54 KST Modified on : 2007-07-24 12:54 KST

Han Sungdong, Senior Reporter

“If grandfather did anything wrong it was that he lost the war, not that he got Japan into it,” says Yuko Tojo, granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, general and wartime prime minister of Japan during World War II. “I remain proud of the history in which the Japanese fought bravely against aggression by the white man.” The 67 year-old Tojo was interviewed in the July 16 edition of the weekly Hankyoreh 21.

Hideki Tojo oversaw the Asia-Pacific War while prime minister and while holding several other cabinet posts between October 1941, right before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, to July 1944. Today his granddaughter speaks for the sentiment of the Japanese right, which still thinks Korea is supposed to be part of Japan. She does not see Imperial Japan’s aggression and colonial rule of Korea or its invasion of China as aggression. What she has to say, then, makes sense in this context.

“Koreans experienced national sadness in Japan’s annexation of Korea, but they overcame that sadness and fought hard as Japanese soldiers,” she told Hankyoreh 21. “I am truly grateful.” Maybe she means “joy” instead of “sadness.” If she is indeed “truly grateful,” her priority should be to do something about the discrimination you see in how the Japanese who were injured in the war and the families of the Japanese war dead together receive 1.5 trillion yen a year, while Zainichi Koreans and other non-Japanese who were forcibly mobilized receive none. You’d think she’d go on a hunger strike to remedy that. And not even for the money, mind you, I mean for the sake of her own conscience and logical consistency.

The same edition of Hankyoreh 21 carries story by a Japanese freelance journalist on the “triangular alliance that defends Yasukuni.” In it, you see how all that money is a golden egg that fattens the Japanese right. The money goes from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare to Nippon Izokukai (the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association), which is said to have a membership of a million families, and then some of that money goes to Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni is the physical symbol and political apparatus that justifies and supports the collection of the various pensions and funds by the Nippon Izokukai and the veterans association, all of whom are members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It is here you find the reason the politically ambitious are so frantic about going to worship at Yasukuni. You have to win the internal party election for party chairman, an election where it is rank and file party members who vote, to be prime minister. Prime ministers and other ambitious politicians return the favor by legislating and amending the law on support and compensation.

Kishi Nobusuke, who during Tojo’s cabinet was Minister of Commerce and Industry and Deputy War Minister (Tojo also served as War Minister in addition to being prime minister), ran the war against the United States. He was an especially powerful mover in the puppet state of Manchukuo, which was located in the north eastern part of China. He rose in prominence there while Tojo’s Kwantung Army was stationed in the region, before it moved to the South East Asian theater in 1943 as the war front expanded, and the two were close. When the United States occupied Japan it killed Tojo and saved Kishi though both were Class A war criminals. He paid the United States back by being the key player in establishing long-term, one-party rule by the pro-American LDP, in a move known as the “1955 Setup” or “1955 System,” with orchestrated American support. He continued to honor his debt later and completed his historical mission by having the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty revised, therefore making the alliance stronger, in 1960.

“I have never once believed Grandfather did anything wrong,” says Yuko Tojo. “Grandfather was an honorable man who died for the country.” Someone with a very similar, if not exactly the same, memory and mindset is leading Japan right now. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he respects his maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi more than anyone. Abe’s obsession with revising Japan’s constitution was the dying will of Grandfather Kishi.

Tojo Yuko was born in 1939 in colonial Seoul, Korea, where her father had been sent to work as an employee of Japan Nitrogenous Fertilizer Company at a nitrogenous fertilizer plant the company ran in Korea. Next month she is running as an independent for a seat in Japan’s upper house and she’s betting granddaddy’s “honor” on it.