The Final 24 Hours of Hideki Tojo

Video Description

December 22nd, 1948. Sugamo Prison, Tokyo. A man who once commanded the armed forces of an empire prepares to face the inevitable. For nearly three years, he has sat in a prison cell, watching as the tribunal that would decide his fate slowly ground forward. Now, with the verdict delivered and all appeals exhausted, General Hideki Tojo, the former Prime Minister of Japan during World War Two, stands at the threshold of his final day on earth. What thoughts pass through the mind of a man condemned? How does someone who sent millions to their deaths confront his own mortality? The next twenty-four hours would be unlike any other in his seventy-three years of life. The winter morning arrived cold and gray over Tokyo. Inside Sugamo Prison, the routine had not changed despite what everyone knew was coming. Tojo woke at his usual time, around six o'clock. The cell that had been his home since his capture in September 1945 was sparse. A cot, a small table, basic necessities. Nothing remained of the life he once lived, when he occupied the highest offices in Japan and made decisions that affected the entire Pacific theater of war.