Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, The Far East, Volume IV

894.00/1134

The Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, Military Intelligence Division (Miles), to the Chief of Staff (Marshall)²⁸

[Washington,] October 17, 1941.

Subject: Japan’s New Premier.

1. The United Press reports that Lieutenant General Hideki Tojo, War Minister in the late Konoye Cabinet, has been designated Premier and ordered to form a new Cabinet.

2. General Tojo was born in 1884, the son of a Samurai. He has held several high offices in the Army, notably that of Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army, Vice Minister of War and Inspector General of Aviation.

3. He has been called the father of modern Japanese Army strategy and is known to be anti-foreign, with a particular dislike for the Russians, and an open admiration for German methods. He created a sensation in 1938 when, as Vice Minister of War, he predicted that Japan would have to fight Russia as well as China. He also warned that America would have to be watched. When the Axis Alliance was signed in September 1940 he said that the road Japan would follow had been “definitely decided” and there was no turning back. General Tojo is regarded by his associates as a man of unshakable determination. He cites reverence and filial piety as the two most important attributes of a Japanese soldier. He has little patience for arguments or other people’s views.

4. Any cabinet selected by General Tojo may be expected to have Axis leanings, but will be otherwise anti-foreign and highly nationalistic.

Sherman Miles

,
Brigadier General, U. S. Army

28. Copy transmitted to the Department of State by the War Department, October 17. In forwarding this for attention of the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary, the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hamilton) made the notation: “An estimate of General Tojo which differs from the FE estimate.”