From naval dissolution to postwar reconstruction

Yonai remained Navy Minister through Japan's defeat and presided over the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy. He worked even with Hideki Tojo to coordinate testimony intended to spare Hirohito from indictment at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The coordination made Yonai part of the effort to shape how responsibility for imperial Japan's war would be assigned. He spent his remaining years helping to rebuild Japan and died of pneumonia in 1948 at the age of 68.