No Vote for Tojo Ex-premier Hideki Tojo and other war criminal suspects held in Sugamo Prison will not vote in today’s election – an “old Japanese custom” to the contrary, SCAP officials have revealed. Japanese law, dating from 1925, allows unconvicted prisoners to ballot in elections, at the discretion of the police chief, provided a guardian responsible for their return accompanies them – and provided “they promise that they will not escape or destroy any evidence,” explained Tatsuo Shibata, secretary of the Crime Prevention Section of the Home Ministry’s Bureau of Public Safety. But the war criminal suspects in Sugamo were arrested under a SCAP directive, and Army officials at the prison said that they had “received no instructions: to arrange for the suspects there to vote.