Hideki Tōjō in the context of "Ichirō Hatoyama"

Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介, Kishi Nobusuke; 13 November 1896 – 7 August 1987) was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is remembered for his exploitative economic management of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in China in the 1930s, imprisonment as a suspected war criminal following World War II, and provocation of the massive Anpo protests as prime minister, retrospectively receiving the nickname "Monster of the Shōwa era" (昭和の妖怪; Shōwa no yōkai). Kishi was the founder of the Satō–Kishi–Abe dynasty in Japanese politics, with his younger brother Eisaku Satō and his grandson Shinzo Abe both later serving as prime ministers of Japan.

Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Kishi graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1920. He rose through the ranks at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and during the 1930s led the industrial development of Manchukuo, where he exploited Chinese slave labor. Kishi served in the wartime cabinet of Hideki Tōjō as minister of commerce and industry from 1941 to 1943 and vice minister of munitions from 1943 to 1944. At the end of the war in 1945, Kishi was imprisoned as a suspected Class A war criminal, but U.S. occupation authorities did not charge, try, or convict him, and released him in 1948 during the Reverse Course. At the end of the occupation in 1952, Kishi was de-purged, enabling his election to the National Diet in 1953. With overt and covert U.S. support, he consolidated Japanese conservatives against perceived threats from the Japan Socialist Party, and in 1955 was instrumental in forming the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Kishi was thus key in establishing the "1955 System" under which the LDP remains Japan's dominant party.

The Battle of Saipan was an amphibious assault launched by the United States against the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II between 15 June and 9 July 1944. The initial invasion triggered the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which effectively destroyed Japanese carrier-based airpower, and the battle resulted in the American capture of the island. Its occupation put the major cities of the Japanese home islands within the range of B-29 bombers, making them vulnerable to strategic bombing by the United States Army Air Forces. It also precipitated the resignation of Hideki Tōjō, the prime minister of Japan.

Saipan was the first objective in Operation Forager, the campaign to occupy the Mariana Islands that got underway at the same time the Allies were invading France in Operation Overlord. After a two-day naval bombardment, the U.S. 2nd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division, and the Army's 27th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith, landed on the island and defeated the 43rd Infantry Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saitō. Organized resistance ended when at least 3,000 Japanese soldiers died in a mass gyokusai attack, and afterward about 1,000 civilians committed suicide.