Warlord - Hardcover

Edwin P. Hoyt, author of Japan's War, The GI's War, and Hitler's War (all of which are published by Cooper Square Press), and Inferno: The Firebombing of Japan, March 9-August 15, 1945 (published by Madison Books), lives in Tokyo, Japan.

An eye-opening political bio of Hideki Tojo, Japan's premier for much of WW II. As the indefatigable Hoyt (The Last Kamikaze, p. 117, etc.) makes clear, Tojo was not a charismatic leader in the mold of Hitler or Mussolini. More good soldier than statesman, he was appointed premier by Emperor Hirohito on October 17, 1941, at the behest of career Army officers intent on maintaining the parliamentary control they had seized in 1937. ``A limited man'' who governed largely at the pleasure of fellow militarists, Tojo never gained dictatorial powers. Nor, in the wake of punishing defeats, did the latter-day samurai go gently into that good night that envelops ousted pols. Having let the side down, however, he was obliged to resign on July 18, 1944, and then was all but ignored until shortly after V-J Day, when occupation forces charged him as a war criminal. Hoyt does a fine job of explaining the factional clashes, infighting, and external events that not only put Tojo in high office but also kept him there despite egregious blunders. Despite the warrior's support for an unavailing campaign to bring India within the Japanese orbit, and his failure to resolve ruinous interservice rivalries on the home front, Tojo was able to keep political peril at bay thanks to the Doolittle raid, the Allies' demand for Japan's unconditional surrender, and constitutional curbs dating back to the Meiji Restoration. While at the helm, though, he acquiesced in the atrocities that imperial troops committed against both POWs and the civilian populations of conquered enemies. A stoic loser who accepted ``victor's justice'' as his fate, Tojo (who had botched an earlier suicide attempt) died by the noose in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison on December 23, 1949. A revelatory portrait of an Axis kingpin whose intriguing story has been overlooked, at least compared to the coverage accorded his German and Italian counterparts. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.