October 17, 1941.
Memorandum for the Chief of Staff:
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

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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 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.

 
                                       (signed) Sherman Miles
                                                SHERMAN MILES
                                      Brigadier General, U. S. Army,
                                   Acting Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2.
 
Distribution:
   Secretary of War                 G.H.Q.
   Under Secretary of War           Coordinator of Information
   Assistant Secretary of War       State Department
   Chief of Staff                   General Embick
   Assistant Chief of Staff, WPD    Director of Naval Intelligence 
 

(EXHIBITS OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE, PHA, PT. 14, EXHIBIT NO. 33 MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES PREPARED BY G-2, WAR DEPARTMENT)