Shigenori Tōgō

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Shigenori Tōgō
Shigenori Tōgō

Shigenori Tōgō (東郷茂徳 Tōgō Shigenori?) (10 December 1882 - 23 July 1950) was Minister of Foreign Affairs for Japan at both the start and the end of the Japanese-American conflict during World War II. He also served as Minister for Colonization in 1941, and assumed the same position, renamed the Minister for Greater East Asia, in 1945.

Throughout the war, Tōgō was among those who doubted that Japan could succeed in a war with the United States. Towards the end, he was one of the chief proponents for acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration which, he felt, contained the best conditions for peace Japan could hope to be offered. Up until the last, he hoped for favorable terms from the Soviet Union. At Tōgō's suggestion, no official response was made to the Declaration at first, though a censored version was released to the Japanese public, while Tōgō waited to hear from Moscow. Unfortunately, many Allied leaders interpreted this silence as a rejection of the Declaration, and so bombing was allowed to continue.

Tōgō was one of the Cabinet Ministers who advocated Japanese surrender in the summer of 1945, and several days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this action was finally taken.

When the war against the United States was decided, he disliked pressing the responsibility of the failure of diplomacy against others, and signed the document of the declaration of war by his responsibility. He became the defendant of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, as a war criminal for that. He was sentenced to 20 years for war crime charges and died of sickness from his confinement in prison.

Tōgō was reputed to have some Korean ancestry, whose ancestor was a potter who was abducted to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98). Tōgō's family surname was Park, indicating their Korean roots, but they changed their surname to Tōgō when he was five.[1][2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ James Lewis, Amadu Sessay (2002). KOREA AND GLOBALIZATION–Politics, Economics and Culture. Routledge-Curzon, 130. ISBN 0-707-1512-8. 
  2. ^ (Japanese) 【靖国】東郷元局長、「ポスト小泉」に参拝中止を求める
  • "Foreign Office Files for Japan and the Far East". Adam Matthew Publications. Accessed 2 March 2005.
  • Spector, Ronald (1985). Eagle Against the Sun. New York: Vintage Books.

[edit] External links

Preceded by: (first term)
Teijiro Toyoda		 Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Oct 1941 - Sept 1942, Apr 1945 - Aug 1945		 Succeeded by: (first term)
Hideki Tōjō
Preceded by: (second term)
Kantaro Suzuki		 Succeeded by: (second term)
Mamoru Shigemitsu
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