Until recently, the location of executed wartime Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo’s remains was one of World War II’s biggest mysteries in the nation he once led.
Now, a Japanese university professor has revealed declassified U.S. military documents that appear to hold the answer.
The documents show the cremated ashes of Tojo, one of the masterminds of the Pearl Harbor attack, were scattered from a U.S. Army aircraft over the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, south of Tokyo.
It was a tension-filled, highly secretive mission, with American officials apparently taking extreme steps meant to keep Tojo’s remains, and those of six others executed with him, away from ultra-nationalists looking to glorify them as martyrs. The seven were hung for war crimes just before Christmas in 1948, three years after Japan’s defeat.
The discovery brings partial closure to a painful chapter of Japanese history that still plays out today, as conservative Japanese politicians attempt to whitewash history, leading to friction with wartime victims, especially China and South Korea.
After years spent verifying and checking details and evaluating the significance of what he’d found, Nihon University Professor Hiroaki Takazawa publicly released the clues to the remains’ location last week. He came across the declassified documents in 2018 at the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It’s believed to be the first time official documents showing the handling of the seven war criminals’ remains were made public, according to Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies and the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.
Hidetoshi Tojo, the leader’s great-grandson, told The Associated Press that the absence of the remains has long been a humiliation for the bereaved families, but he’s relieved the information has come to light.