Tojo Quotes

You certainly have surprised Hitler and Tojo. If you hadn't come in, first with materiel and then with men, the war would be over by now, and Hitler and Tojo would have won it. The World owes you an enormous debt.

Everybody was a hero. Hadn't we all joined together to kick the hell out of de Gruber, and that fat Italian, and put that little rice-eating Tojo in his place? Black men from the South who had held no tools more complicated than plows had learned to use lathes and borers and welding guns, and had brought in their quotas of war-making machines. Women who had only known maid's uniforms and mammy-made dresses donned the awkward men's pants and steel helmets, and made the ship-fitting sheds hum some buddy. Even the children had collected paper, and at the advice of elders who remembered World War I, balled the tin foil from cigarettes and chewing gum into balls as big as your head. Oh, it was a time.

Until the last day of the war, MacArthur and his staff continued to plan for Olympic [the invasion of the Japanese home islands]. Yet nobody, with the possible exception of the general, wanted to launch the operation. A British infantryman, gazing at bloated corpses on a Burman battlefield, vented the anger and frustration common to almost every Allied soldier in those days, about the enemy's rejection of reason: "Ye stupid sods! Ye stupid Japanni sods! Look at the fookin' state of ye! Ye wadn't listen--and yer all fookin' dead! Tojo's way! Ye dumb bastards! Ye coulda bin suppin' chah an' screwin' geeshas in yer fookin' lal paper 'ooses--an' look at ye! Ah doan't knaw!

Retrospectively, American statesmen realized the rashness of their oil embargo. As the later secretary of state Dean Acheson put it, America’s misreading of Japanese intentions was not of “what the Japanese government proposed to do in Asia, not of the hostility our embargo would excite, but of the incredibly high risks General Tojo would assume to accomplish his ends. No one in Washington realized that he and his regime regarded the conquest of Asia not as the accomplishment of an ambition but as the survival of a regime. It was a life-and-death matter to them.”146 Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a partial success in the short term, and Japan went on to enjoy great tactical victories against America and Britain, but the conflict eventually led to its almost total destruction by 1945. Its wars in East Asia cost tens of millions of lives.

Don’t I need to practice firing?” “Well, it’s not as if you’re going to shoot somebody with this. You’re just going to shoot yourself, right?” Aomame nodded. “In that case, you don’t have to practice firing. You just have to learn to load it, release the safety, and get the feel of the trigger. And anyway, where were you planning to practice firing it?” Aomame shook her head. She had no idea. “Also, how were you planning to shoot yourself? Here, give it a try.” Tamaru inserted the loaded magazine, checked to make sure the safety was on, and handed the gun to Aomame. “The safety is on,” he said. Aomame pressed the muzzle against her temple. She felt the chill of the steel. Looking at her, Tamaru slowly shook his head several times. “Trust me, you don’t want to aim at your temple. It’s a lot harder than you think to shoot yourself in the brain that way. People’s hands usually shake, and it throws their aim off. You end up grazing your skull, but not killing yourself. You certainly don’t want that to happen.” Aomame silently shook her head. “Look what happened to General Tojo after the war. When the American military came to arrest him, he tried to shoot himself in the heart by pressing the muzzle against his chest and pulling the trigger, but the bullet missed and hit his stomach without killing him. Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn’t know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It’s a terrible way to die. A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.

Koks yra buvęs gyvenimas, toks yra ir jo vaisius. Žmonėse noksta visokios „dovanos.” Ir užgimdamas kiekvienas kitoks kaip kitas, kitomis „dovanomis” ypatingas. Tokiu būdu aiškėja žmonių nelygybė, jų įvairumas, tūleriopumas. Tojo pradžioj nebūta, bet kiekvienas amžius, ant žemės pergyventas, jį vykina, o kad ir tik po truputėlį. Devanchane žmonių įvairumas pasirodo jų nelygiame gyvenime, skaistume, kuriuo jie gyvena aname esmės būvyje.

The Bombay Chronicle asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of the fact that the United States was now in the war. It was December 20, 1941. 'I cannot welcome this entry of America,' Gandhi said. 'By her territorial vastness, amazing energy, unrivalled financial status and owing to the composite character of her people she is the one country which could have saved the world from the unthinkable butchery that is going on.' Now, he said, there was no powerful nation left to mediate and bring about the peace that all peoples wanted. 'It is a strange phenomenon,' he said, 'that the human wish is paralysed by the creeping effect of the war fever.' Churchill wrote a memo to the chiefs of staff on the future conduct of the war. 'The burning of Japanese cities by incendiary bombs will bring home in a most effective way to the people of Japan the dangers of the course to which they have committed themselves,' he wrote. It was December 20, 1941. Life Magazine published an article on how to tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person. It was December 22, 1941. Chinese people have finely bridged noses and parchment-yellow skin, and they are relatively tall and slenderly built, the article said. Japanese people, on the other hand, have pug noses and squat builds, betraying their aboriginal ancestry. 'The modern Jap is the descendant of Mongoloids who invaded the Japanese archipelago back in the mists of prehistory, and of the native aborigines who possessed the islands before them, Life explained. The picture next to the article was of the Japanese premier, Hideki Tojo. In the Lodz ghetto, trucks began taking the Gypsies away. They went to Chelmno, the new death camp, where they were killed with exhaust gases and buried. It was just before Christmas 1941.

The man’s arm finally snapped at the elbow and the dagger dropped, and now Solomon Saunders held the dagger, and it was the worst way in the world to kill or be killed, and he felt his stomach erupting and scalding lava spilling over and eating up his insides as he raised his arm and hesitated, and the other soldier grabbed at him, and then Solly came down with a vengeance, and he felt the steel tear ruthlessly into human flesh like it was a chicken, and back and down, and he didn’t hate this man beneath him. “I don’t hate you, goddamn your hari-kari soul!” And down and back, down and back, and hot tears flooding Solly’s cheeks and nausea in his nasty throat and down and back, the man’s chest was a dark bloody geyser gushing blood, his pleading eyes his desperate eyes. “I don’t hate you, Tojo, damn you. I don’t hate you! I don’t even know you—damn you!” The boyish soldier gave up the ghost just as Solly’s steam gave out and he fell forward on top of this very very dead young stranger from the islands of Japan, and all was peace and all was quiet, and brotherhood and all that crap, even as the battle raged around the lucky living bastards who were dying on the strip for freedom.

Not good, but sometimes necessary when people try to make you believe you are secondary or that you shouldn't even exist. Why do you think we study wars in history class? How many months do we spend on World War II alone? When someone evil crosses that line - like Hitler or Mussolini or Tojo or more they teach us. So why is it okay for our government to drop bombs on people and kill with guns, but we aren't supposed to use our fists to protect ourselves? This country was founded on and by violence.

ON DECEMBER 8, 1941, cinemas and theaters in Japan were made to temporarily suspend their evening performances and broadcast a speech recorded by Prime Minister Tojo Hideki earlier that day. U.S. films—films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which the Japanese relished in easier times—were now officially banned. That night, audiences were confronted with the voice of a leader who hardly resembled Jimmy Stewart. Tojo was a bald and bespectacled man of middle age with no remarkable features other than his mustache. His exaggerated buckteeth existed only in Western caricatures, but he did not look like a senior statesman who had just taken his country to war against a most formidable enemy, and his voice was memorable only for its dullness. He recited the speech, “On Accepting the Great Imperial Command,” with the affected diction of a second-rate stage actor. Our elite Imperial Army and Navy are now fighting a desperate battle. Despite the empire’s every possible effort to salvage it, the peace of the whole of East Asia has collapsed. In the past, the government employed every possible means to normalize U.S.-Japan diplomatic relations. But the United States would not yield an inch on its demands. Quite the opposite. The United States has strengthened its ties with Britain, the Netherlands, and China, demanding unilateral concessions from our Empire, including the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the imperial forces from China, the rejection of the [Japanese puppet] Nanjing government, and the annulment of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Even in the face of such demands, the Empire persistently strove for a peaceful settlement. But the United States to this day refused to reconsider its position. Should the Empire give in to all its demands, not only would Japan lose its prestige and fail to see the China Incident to its completion, but its very existence would be in peril. Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.

O solo era arenoso, um céspede brilhante e líquido brotava entre as raízes do tojo, e nada mais comovente para Amélia do que o ruído dos passos que pisavam a agulha seca, a gorda folhagem da chorina, a açucarada contextura da areia pálida e húmida. Ela marchava devagar, com o seu ligeiro pisar, próprio das pessoas a quem o movimento assusta e que vivem sedentariamente; era a segunda vez que andava sozinha no pinhal circundado por esteios de pedra onde se prendia velho arame farpado; e, como acontece com as mulheres caprichosas, gostava de contemplar‑se no seu retrato bucólico e triste, guardando, porém, no fundo do coração, a certeza duma breve comédia e dum desfrute da natureza sem qualquer convicção. Quando se extrai uma surpresa duma insignificância, isso equivale a receber uma lição gratuita aparentemente, mas em cujo acaso não se acredita. Tal é a alma do homem — duvida sempre da simplicidade dos factos sucedidos no âmbito do seu próprio ser; o natural não acontece senão no reino bruto, a razão não nos incita ao que é natural, mas ao que é possível.

À superfície da madrugada iam correndo sons ligeiros, apenas pressentidos. O distender imperceptível das plantas aliviadas do orvalho, o frémito leve de mil e um movimentos ignotos. A vida ínfima acordava. Depois, principiou o restolho fugidio dos coelhos no tojo, o primeiro e breve alvoroço das asas. Os galos cantavam já soprando a última névoa do amanhecer. Pela aldeia floria o rumor humano, de mistura com o fumo dos lares e o cheiro dos currais abertos. O dia chegava por fim. (Capítulo XVII)

Liu was taken at bayonet point from his Shandong village in 1944 and sent to work in the Showa coal mine in Hokkaido. Unlike those at Hanaoka who rose up in rebellion, he fled into the mountains. He escaped in July 1945, just about one month before the end of the war, but he was so terrified that he remained in hiding, living off grasses and nuts, and occasionally descending to the remote coastline to collect seaweed, less afraid of bears than of human beings, and with no knowledge that the war was over, until he was by chance discovered by a rabbit trapper in 1958. When he emerged, not only was the war over, but Kishi Nobosuke, the Tojo Cabinet's Minister for Commerce and Labor, who had been responsible for the forced-labor program, had become prime minister. When Kishi's government ordered an investigation of Liu on suspicion of illegal entry into the country, Liu published a famous statement of protest and then returned to China. As of the early 1990s, he was still pursuing his case for justice against the Japanese government, and still waiting for a response from it.

General Hideki Tojo ordered that the Sen Jin Kun, the Imperial Army's Battle Ethics, be distributed to all officers and men both at home and abroad. This order made the unwritten code of the samurai as interpreted by the Japanese High Command the required conduct of all Japanese servicemen. It ordered Japanese troops to embrace death warmly for the sake of the emperor-god and of the nation

Tuo tarpu kažkoks vargšas katorgininkėlis nuo Gdansko, pasisukaliojęs prie mūsų, padovanojo mum visiem vieną kiaušinį, - kad vardas tojo lenkelio būtų palaimintas per amžius! Ir mes dabar, kaip visi gyvieji žmonės, švenčiame velykas! Sėdim po stogu, ant suolo, - ir kiaušinį turime! Vyriausias iš mūsų tarpo, drebančiom rankom iš susijaudinimo, paėmė tą kiaušinėlį, padalino kiekvienam po plonučiuką gabalėlį, apsiašarodamas palaimino kiekvieną iš mūsų. Simbolis - simboliu, bet vis dėlto simbolis kartais esti daug galingesnis už pačią pasiučiausią tikrovę! Tą dieną pietų mes jau nebenorėjome. Buvome sotūs tuo kiaušinio gabalėliu, - ir dar kaip sotūs! Galimas daiktas, pasotino mus ir tyliai paslapčiomis prarytos ašaros, gal dar ir slapti prisiminimai - Tėvynės, tėvų, brolių, seserų, šeimų, - visa tai labai galimas daiktas, bet istorija apie tai tyli.

Sagres é o cabo do mundo. Levo os pés magoados de caminhar sobre pedregulhos azulados, num carreirinho, por entre lava atormentada. Do passado restam cacos, o presente é uma coisa fora da realidade, grande extensão deserta e encapelada, com pedraria a aflorar entre tufos lutuosos; vasto ossário abandonado onde as pedras são caveiras, as ervas cardos negros e os tojos só espinhos e algumas folhas de zinco. O mar - é verdade, esquecia-o - mas o mar como imensidade e tragédia, e ao lado a gigantesca ponta de São Vicentte, só negrume e sombra. Mar e céu, céu e mar, terra reduzida a torresmos, e o sentimento do ilimitado. Esta grandeza esmaga-me. Grande sítio para ser devorado por uma ideia! Isto devia chamar-se Sagres ou a ideia fixa... Só agora entrevejo o vulto do Infante. Cerca-o e aperta-o a solidão de ferro. Pedra e mar - torna-se de pedra. Está só no mundo e contrariado por todos. Obstina-se durante doze anos! contra o clamor geral. - Perdição! Perdição! - agoura toda a gente, e Ele não ouve os gritos da plebe ou a murmuração das pessoas «de mais qualidade» (Barros). Aqui não se ouve nada... Nem um sinal de assentimento encontra. Não importa, Só e o sonho, na gigantesca penedia que com dois dedos inexoráveis aponta o caminho marítimo para as Índias pela direcção da ponta de Sagres, e a descoberta do Brasil pela direcção da ponta de São Vicente. Lágrimas, orfandades, mortes... Mas o homem de pedra está diante deste infinito amargo e só vê o sonho que o devora. Rodeia-o a imensidão. Os mais príncipes contentam-se «com a terra que ora temos, a qual Deus deu por termo e habitação dos homens». Este Príncipe não. Este Príncipe pertence a outra raça e a outra categoria de homens. Não lhe basta um grande sonho - há-de por força realizá-lo e «levar os Portugueses a povoar terras ermas por tantos perigos de mar, de fome e de sede». Não é egoísmo, mas só vive para o pensamento que se apoderou de todo o seu ser. Um pensamento e o ermo. E este é óptimo para forjar uma alma à luz do céu ou do inferno. Os dias neste sítio magnético pesam como chumbo. Uma pobre mulher do povo dizia-me ontem: —Isto aqui é tão nu e tão só que a gente ou se agarra a um trabalho e não o larga, ou morre. É a realidade que nos mata. Este panorama é na verdade trágico. Não cessa dia e noite o lamento eterno da ventania e das águas. E os cabos, que são de ferro e escorrem sangue, obstinam-se em apontar o seu destino de dor a esta terra de pescadores.

He wanted to tell Grace that he knew what was coming and that it was time for them to escape to a place where they could ride out the ugliness and not think about Hitler or Tojo or catastrophic loss. But he knew things had already reached a point where even a prescient time traveler could do little more than make the best of a bad situation.

In the summer of 2002, I embarked on a mission that had been a goal of mine for many years. That mission was to write about a group of American servicemen who fought for our country. I was naturally drawn to WWII as a subject. I had read numerous accounts of how America led the effort to defeat the twin evils of Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan. A visit to a local bookstore, however, opened my eyes to two realities: 1) many books have been written about the heroes of WWII; 2) few books have been written about the heroes of the Vietnam War. The reasons for this discrepancy were obvious to me. Conventional wisdom tells us that the men and women of WWII were heroes who won our last great war. The deeds of our heroes should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom is correct. Yet, that same “wisdom” has two faces. The men of WWII were treated as heroes. The men of the Vietnam War were not. Instead of receiving ticker tape parades, many were greeted with shouts of “baby killer” and “war monger”. Thrown tomatoes, rocks, profanities and,in some cases, being spat on by fellow Americans was a common occurrence. That “wisdom” tells us that the men and women who fought in Vietnam were not heroes. They fought an immoral war, a war which they did not “win”. Not only were they immoral, they were losers as well. The conventional wisdom about the men and women who fought in Vietnam could not be more wrong. The heroes of Vietnam fought for the same reasons as every other American in every other war: for freedom, for country, for family and for the buddy holding the line next to him. That visit to the bookstore opened my eyes. My mission was crystal clear: I was to write a book about the heroes of the Vietnam War. That book was to tell a true account of combat, an account that had been ignored by historians up to that point. I wanted to tell a story that might be lost to posterity forever but for my efforts. The book was to set the record of “conventional wisdom” straight for good: that the men and women of Vietnam were and are heroes who won the war they were told to fight. That, as heroes, their deeds should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom should get it right. Lions of Medina is a true account of Marine courage at its best. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Courage that defined the generation of men and women who fought in Vietnam. This book is a tribute to those who fought the Vietnam War, a reminder that freedom is never free, and a testament to the valor of the American soul. Doyle D. Glass May, 2007 Acknowledgments Lions of Medina would not have been possible without the contributions of many dedicated individuals.

On December 22, 1941, both Time and Life magazines ran stories helpfully guiding readers on how to distinguish their new Chinese "friends" from the enemy "Japs." Life's story included photographs. The first featured a Chinese government official smiling humbly at the camera. The other featured a stern-looking General Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Both portraits were covered with handwritten notes identifying defining features and racial rules. The Chinese, for example, had a "parchment yellow complexion," a "higher bridge," a "longer, narrower face," a "scant beard," and "never has rosy cheeks." In contrast, the Japanese had an "earthy yellow complexion," "flatter nose," "sometimes rosy cheeks," "heavy beard," and "broader, shorter face." Time's description of "how to tell your friends from the Japs" was even more specific. "Virtually all Japanese are short... seldom fat, [and] often dry up and grow lean as they age" whereas the Chinese "often put on weight." Chinese had more "placid, kindly, open" facial expressions, while the Japanese were "more positive, dogmatic, arrogant." Perhaps unsurprisingly, some Chinese Americans sought ways to help white Americans distinguish them from Japanese Americans and wore "I am Chinese" buttons during the war.

Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo

For the United States of America, remote in a hemisphere whose isolation the war had forever destroyed, World War II was mainly an expedition, a crusade of sorts to set to rights a world gone wrong. Many Americans equated the world's troubles with Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini - or some "ism" - and honestly expected that when the symptoms of the sickness were treated, a better day would surely dawn. Government propaganda, and even business advertising, continually bolstered this hope. It was an attitude among all parties, typically American, and in the light of American history and ethos, inevitable.