I read the following in today’s Newsday:
Presumably, everything that Tojo et al did was on orders of Emperor Hirohito, wasn’t it? Why not prosecute him as well? Was he guaranteed amnesty in the terms of surrender? Was it a pragmatic decision made to make it easier to rebuild and democratize Japan without popular opposition, since the Japanese consider their emperors to be divine to some degree?
I imagine that if Hitler had been taken alive he would have been brought to trial.
A lot of it, I think, was to guarantee a successful occupation. Even though the emperor had formally renounced his divinity, and State Shinto had been broken up, he was still looked on as divine or semi-divine by most Japanese, and to imprison or execute him for war crimes would have caused some really bad feelings.
Besides that, like Shade’s site says, there was a real idea that Hirohito was just a puppet/figurehead anyway, and that it was the Japanese military who was really at fault for the war, unlike in the case of Germany, where Hitler exercised real and well publicized command.
Officially, it was George VI who decided not to take England into war in 1936 over the Rhineland or in 1938 over the Sudetenland, but who did declare war in 1939 over the invasion of Poland. In point of fact, the first decision was made by Stanley Baldwin, and the second two by Neville Chamberlain, with input from their Cabinets. But war was declared in the King’s name, with him standing for what his advisors, who held the political power, had decided.
Most knowledgeable people recognized the difference between the legal fiction of the Crown declaring war and the actual political reality of the Government deciding to do so.
Hirohito was in much the same position – what he “decided” in the late 30s and regarding Pearl Harbor was pretty much the decisions of his Government, made in his name but largely without his personal views taken into account. He himself as an individual was generally opposed to the war entirely, as was brought out later. And it was on his personal act that the surrender of September 1945 was made, since he was convinced that the holdouts in a badly divided Government would only respond to an order from the throne, and that the men who believed that Japan’s only hope was in surrender and seeking mercy from its conquerors were in the right.
He was therefore not prosecuted for what was done in his name, over his personal objections. Added to this was the political reality that most Japanese were still personally loyal to him, and that the establishment of a stable postwar state would be best done by a new constitution promulgated by him and reflecting his own limited-monarchy democratic views, bringing most Japanese into a government that reflected tradition in how it was instituted and yet established a modern democracy in its actual functioning.
So, was Hirohito’s emperor-ship genuinely toothless, like the British King’s was? Or was Hirohito just a particularly weak emperor personally?
I don’t know how the war crimes issue figured in but the last months of the war were like this.
The six leaders who really ruled Japan were evenly divided between fighting to the last man and surrender. The US wanted unconditional surrender which included the Hirohito matter and Japan refused to consider surrender without including a provision for Hirohito–it was an excuse, the government wasn’t going to surrender in either case.
The pro-surrender group seized the day immediately after the first atomic bomb, went to Hirohito and he broke the tie in favor of surrender. A short term coup d’etat following, resulting in the killing or suicide of several of the pro-war forces wanting to trump the decision. At the same time, the US decided Hirohito was unimportant compared to surrender.
The official story was that he was a pawn of Tojo’s, more recently, people have pointed out that he was delighted to go along. MacArthur and US authorities stressed the idea that he had no power in order to justify keeping him in office, but he was more involved in things than is generally considered.
Everything I’ve read suggests that he was never “delighted”, merely acquiescent. In fact, he was disturbed by the decisions that lead to war withthe US and UK. This isn’t just MacArthur’s propaganda (which was useful in both Japan and the US), but also the recollection of courtiers. I’d love to read sources that suggest otherwise.
As to the Emporer’s power, well, it’s tricky. Shoguns, of course, dominated government for centuries until the Meiji Restoration, when the power of the samurai class was broken by Western-style professional soldiers. These professionals soon came to dominate the government in the Emporer’s name. So it wasn’t just Hirohito himself, but the structure and customs of the governmental organisation. The Emporer, for instance, never expressed himself directly in the Imperial Conference meetings. His direct address to the Imperial Conference was what broke the stalemate in favor of surrender, but that was considered an unprecedented action on his part.
It’s not at all unusual to find times throughout Japanese history that the emporer was just a figure head, with the real power lying elsewhere. Maybe some Japanese scholars can clarify this, but it was my understanding that this state of affairs was more the rule than the exception.
We do know that he didn’t take any lead in ruling. We alos know he made particualr objections to conquest. he was a weak figue, but not one opposed to the fighting. He was also certainly in no danger from the militartist faction.
Rememebr that they were enither disinterested nor uninvolved figures. And that they were dedicated to protecting the Emperor; their recollections may not be reliable.
As Henri IV put it “Paris vaut bien un messe”. In August of 1945, if giving Hirohito a walk (other than his de-apotheosis) would allow the Japanese to surrender it was worth it. The projected costs of invasion were too high not to take them up on it, especially given that Tojo and his government were an equally public face of Japanese villainy. My guess is that if the US had been forced to invade the emperor would have faced trial.
His role as a shaper of policy is still intently debated, though it seems unlikely that the war (with the US) would have started without his acquiesence at the least. While the colonels and generals on the ground were capable of manufacturing incidents with China and the USSR, it would be somewhat more difficult to do so with a naval war, especially as the naval leadership was somewhat more rational and cognizant of the Pacific balance of power.
Didn’t Japan’s surrender terms include a guarantee of immunity for the person of the Emperor?
I swear I heard that on an A&E special about WWII.
Just a side-note apropos of nothing.
I have a photo in a book of a B-24 Liberator with this painted on the upper surfaces of the wings: ‘FINITO BENITO/NEXT HIROHITO’
The reason he wasn’t tried is that it wasn’t politically expedient to do so.
Had we tried the Emperor, & the Japanese people would have started an insurgency movement that would make the Iraqis look like Campfire Girls, & we’d still be fighting them.
I respect the Japanese people. I respect them enough to be very wary of what they were capable of doing, with nothing more than national will alone. You should, too.
The conditions in the 20th century are another matter, but historically the Japanese emperors have almost always been toothless, even going back to the 10th century. The closest they ever really came exerting much power was a short string of cloistered emperors (emperors who served impotently until their sons were old enough to take over, then stepped down, joined a monastery and started pulling the strings) in the 13th century.
Just adding to what others have said: It would be fair to say that he was one of the very, very few Japanese emperors who actually did something historically meaningful, when he called for surrender.
For most of Japanese history, the emperor was nothing more than a symbol puppet used to give legitimacy to military dictators. Under strong dictatorships, like those of Nobunaga, or the Tokugawa shogunate, the emperor was pretty much a prisonner in a golden cage, with all real power and most freedoms stripped from him.
I agree with this:
The U.S. general {MacArthur} flatly resisted colleagues who felt that Hirohito should be tried as a war criminal. Above all he wanted a peaceful occupation. The Emperor who finally stopped his generals from continuing a last-ditch war was surely the man who could keep his subjects peaceful. The Emperor agreed.
The decision remains debatable. With 20-20 hindsight, modern critics have pointed out that Hirohito bore almost as much responsibility for the war as Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was sentenced to death by the war crimes tribunal. More than 3 million Japanese–military and civilians–had died in a war waged in the Emperor’s name. To exonerate him completely cast doubt on the entire proceedings and has done much over the years to deepen Japan’s collective amnesia about the crimes of its military. At the time, however, the decision seemed prudent to the American occupiers (myself among them), faced with the task of governing, indeed re-modeling millions of Japanese who had only recently seemed ready to fight to the death against invasion.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/hirohito1.html
No. The surrender was unconditional. The US insisted on it.
In what capacity were you there?
I believe that the US had quietly and indirectly, through conversations with other governments, indicated to the Japanese that the institute of the Emperor could remain - but no direct promise either way about Hirohito. This would assuage Japanese concerns that their entire society and culture would be erased - much as they had to try to erase the cultures of some of their conquered nations. Not including such a promise in the Potsdam declaration strengthened the Allied position, and also was good pr back home.
The Japanese did everything in the name of the Emperor - so the Emperor coming out and saying to cooperate with the Allies (they pointedly did not use the word surrender) pre-empted anything the hardliners could say. In the past, an emperor who acted that way would be subjected to a coup - and one was attempted against Hirohito, but there were enough realists around to quash it. Had the hard line military types won, all they would have to do was issue proclamations in the Emperors name to continue the war - since the Japanese people virtually never saw the Emperor and never heard him speak, who would know?
I think Hirohito was all for the war - until they started to lose. Once he felt that the Allies might keep the institute of emperor, he wasn’t taking much of a chance in throwing in with the surrender advocates. If the Japanese kept fighting, he knew he would probably be killed or hanged. Making himself useful proved to be an incentive to letting him live.