HIROHITO

This was a composition he had written as a 19 year old student. At the time he was concerned about the rigidity of the Japanese society. Ironically, many historians believe that it was just this rigidity that plunged Japan into destructive war, and the same rigidity that guaranteed that they would lose same.

Prior to this the Japanese had not even considered what terms they might fight for if there were to be a peace negotiation. What the Japanese leadership apparently totally missed was the fact that President Roosevelt and all other American leaders throughout the war had promised that only unconditional surrender would be acceptable. This was reiterated in a Joint Declaration of the U. S. , China, and Great Britain. The Japanese thought this just propaganda and never took it seriously.

While the Western nations were doubtless guilty of blatant racism and anti-Asian discrimination, the Japanese protest was tainted with a substantial degree of hypocrisy. At the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiations the Japanese argued strenuously for equal treatment of Japanese by the West but did not favor extension of the equality principle to Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Chomoros, and other Asian peoples. Japan itself, led by its Emperor, considered other Asian people racially and culturally inferior. Thus they were the inherent leaders of Asia and all Asian people.

This was a composition he had written as a 19 year old student. The Versailles Treaty had just gone into effect. The “extremist” thought he referred to was left wing, labor rights-oriented thought. The thoughts of the Japanese right-wing extremists who would plunge the East into disastrous war was not so worrisome to him.

On August 14, Japan announced its surrender

At that point the Japanese were losing the war on every front. It is not clear whether Hirohito would actually have done such and not tried to escape in the end, however he certainly expected his subjects, military and civilian to do so. That expectation and the behavior of the Japanese troops fighting to the death on many islands was a powerful factor in leading Truman, Marshall and other key American leaders to use the Atomic Bomb. See Marshall: {641063}

The Emperor was writing to his son to explain the defeat of Japan. In what was a bit of revisionist history, the Emperor neglected to mention that with the exception of some of the incursions in China, Hirohito had personally approved every Japanese invasion including Pearl Harbor. Further, it was he who had approved the orders that Japanese troops should fight to the death rather than retreat or surrender.

He was reacting to the Japanese Defense of Okinawa which was failing on every front. When Japan started the war with America, its leaders were not at all convinced that they could drive America from the Pacific, but they were convinced that America would not spend the men and material to invade Japanese territory and that they would be able to negotiate a peace at some point if the price of invasion was too high. That assumption was brought into doubt.

In Japan at that time there was no civilian control of the military and the military resented any attempt at the civilian government to influence military affairs in any way whatsoever. At the same time the military often tried to influence the politics of civilian government. The Emperor made this feeble effort to inhibit that, but as World War II proved, he had not tried very hard to prevent the military from dominating the country.

Ironically, the Japanese Government and military were so polarized that it took several days for the authorities to get together and agree on a course of surrender action. The second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki speeded things up.

Declaration of Humanity. Printed in Japanese Newspapers. Contrast this with the previous Japanese political leadership tradition as {43746}

It was never submitted as evidence in any proceeding or made a part of the U. S. investigatory record of war crimes of World War II. Nor was it ever found in Japan in the official records. The only copy was found in 2003 at the home of Bonner F. Fellers one of MacArthur’s top aids in the Japanese Occupation. Fellers and McArthur advocated not further investigating or trying the Japanese Emperor either because they, believed he was not guilty or because they thought his trial would be too disruptive to the occupation. The authenticity of this monologue has not been verified. Apologists for the Emperor argue that it shows that he was a virtual prisoner of the militarists and unable to stop the war or any of the war crimes; others argue that the Japanese military would never have gone against the will of the Emperor and that this document was probably prepared with the coaching of General Fellers as ex post facto “evidence” of the Emperor’s innocence. See {643148} and {601309} for examples of Fellers manipulating the “evidence.”