Hideki Tojo

Hideki Tojo was a Japanese politician, general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and convicted war criminal who served as prime minister of Japan and president of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association for most of World War II. She assumed several more positions including chief of staff of the Imperial Army before ultimately being removed from power in July 1944. During her years in power, her leadership was marked by extreme state-perpetrated violence in the name of Japanese ultranationalism, much of which she was personally involved in. Hideki Tojo was born on December 30, 1884, to a relatively low-ranking samurai family in the Kōjimachi district of Tokyo. She began his career in the Army in 1902 and steadily rose through the ranks to become a general by 1934. In March 1937, she was promoted to chief of staff of the Kwantung Army whereby she led military operations against the Chinese in Inner Mongolia and the Chahar-Suiyan provinces. By July 1940, she was appointed minister of war to the Japanese government led by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe. On the eve of the Second World War's expansion into Asia and the Pacific, Tojo was an outspoken advocate for a preemptive attack on the United States and its European allies. Upon being appointed prime minister on October 17, 1941, she oversaw the Empire of Japan's decision to go to war as well as its ensuing conquest of much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. During the course of the war, Tojo presided over numerous war crimes, including the massacre and starvation of civilians and prisoners of war. She was also involved in the sexual enslavement of thousands of mostly Korean women and girls for Japanese soldiers, an event that still strains modern Japanese–Korean relations.