Ichirō Hatoyama (鳩山 一郎 Hatoyama Ichirō, born January 1 1883 in Tokyo, died March 7 1959) was a Japanese politician and the 52nd, 53rd and 54th Prime Minister of Japan, serving terms from December 10 1954 to March 19, 1955, from then to November 22 1955, and from then to December 23 1956.
Hatoyama was elected to the House of Representatives as a Rikken Seiyūkai member in 1936. He was purged by Supreme Commander Allied Powers because they thought he had co-operated with the authoritarian government in the 1930s and 1940s, but he returned in 1951. As prime minister, he rebuilt diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, and paroled some of the Class A war criminals who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Tokyo Trial.
The CIA files, declassified in 2005 and publicized by the U.S. National Archives in January, detail a plot to oust the pro-U.S. prime minister, Shigeru Yoshida, and install a more hawkish government led by Ichiro Hatoyama in 1952.
Hatoyama was a Master Mason and a Baptist.
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Last updated on Sunday July 06, 2008 at 22:05:35 PDT (GMT -0700)
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