2023-11-19 04:46:14
The Emperor was more than a symbol of greatness for the Japanese. He was a ‘heavenly sovereign’; a kind of deity descended from the firmament to guide his people. However, that same character that the Japanese respected and venerated as a god spent the last days of World War II hidden in a humid bunker located under his palace. Something similar to Hitler in the Berlin Chancellery. For Hirohito, tall, with a weak complexion and glasses as thick as glass, that was a slap in the face of reality that could have been greater when the Soviets asked for his head. Luckily for him, American General Douglas MacArthur saved him from hanging.
Hirohito’s misadventures have been blurred in time. Perhaps because the United States went out of its way to portray him as a magnanimous leader who stopped World War II instead of sending his men to die for Japan. He could have done it, as journalist Raymond Cartier explained in ‘Black and White’ back in the seventies, but he avoided it even though it showed the world that he was a mere mortal. «MacArthur recalled that it had not been atomic bombs, but imperial wisdom that determined the conquest of Japan without a drop of American blood. By ordering his men to live, the Emperor not only saved one hundred thousand American lives, but also guided Japan toward a democratic future,” the reporter explained.
Tension in Japan
Cartier knew what he was saying. He was never a mere analyst of those who base his assertions on the advantages granted by the passage of time. The conclusions that he presented in that report dated September 10, 1971 had been forged after experiencing the occupation of France by the German army in 1940; after participating in the Second World War as a Military Security officer and after working as a correspondent once the European conflict ended. As if that were not enough – which it is not – he dedicated the last part of his life to shaping reference works such as ‘Hitler and his generals. Secrets of the Second World War’ and a colossal history of that period he called, simply, ‘The Second World War’.
The French reporter defines Hirohito’s last moments in that bunker as those of a cornered dog that has already come to terms with its end. If Hitler remained defiant until the very moment he tasted the cyanide pill, the Emperor was despondent after the nuclear terror unleashed by the United States. August 9, 1945 was the saddest day of all. After the fall of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the Council met with the Japanese boss in a room located behind a narrow corridor flanked by three-meter-thick walls. Everything was lost, but protocol required those present to wear morning coats and striped pants. Elegant until the end.
«The heat is suffocating; Outside, the moonlit summer night idealizes the imperial gardens, disguising their wounds. But the war sticks to the nostrils with the acrid and fetid smell of burned Tokyo,” writes Cartier. The news was devastating. The Soviet Union had declared war on Japan in a belated attempt to ride alongside the victorious nag and had invaded Manchuria. «Fifteen hundred North American bombers operate north of Honshua. A second atomic bomb has fallen on Nagasaki. A third – but the report is false – must fall on Tokyo on August 12,” the journalist reveals. The Council was divided. Three of those present insisted that it was necessary to fight until they died. The same number requested capitulation.
What could they do? The situation was as tense as it was desperate. One by one, those present explained their ideas. In a low voice, as dictated by the Emperor’s presence, and with his gaze towards the ground. “A mosquito has entered the shelter and is buzzing around the heads, but a gesture to hunt it down would mean an inconceivable impropriety,” adds Cartier. At the official level the power was held by the Government. The decision they made would be ratified by Hirohito, like a constitutional monarch, but, as they could not reach an agreement, they decided that his majesty would be the one to establish what to do. “The initiative is unprecedented, it reverses the roles and puts the responsibility on the imperial shoulders,” he concludes.
Hanged?
Good Hirohito was stunned. «Hirohito is not a hero. He is a lab man, lanky, who dresses and speaks poorly, so myopic that the lenses of his glasses look like magnifying glasses, which enlarge his eyes in a strange way. Theoretical God, he has been nothing more than a constitutional monarch throughout his entire life. But how can you disobey him? “wrote the journalist. Clumsily, the Emperor got up from the easy chair and declared that there was only room for surrender. The Japanese commanders shortly thereafter informed his ambassador in Switzerland that they accepted the terms of the Potsdam declaration “on the understanding that such declaration must not prejudice the prerogatives of his Majesty as sovereign monarch.”
The capitulation was not well received by some of the Japanese. Not in vain a group of hotheads tried to stop the recording of the message in which Hirohito announced the surrender to his subjects. Convinced that they could only fight to the last man, they sneaked into the bunker and had to be stopped by members of the government. This is how the French journalist narrated it: «The day before, blood had flowed in the very grounds of the imperial palace when the fanatics of extreme fighting had tried to take over the place and perhaps the person of the Emperor. “He had locked himself in his residence, partially burned, with the conviction that he would not escape being put on trial.” He was lucky.
He didn’t fare any better with the Soviets either. Despite having been slow to officially declare himself hostile to the Japanese, Joseph Stalin longed to see the Emperor hanged from the gallows as a lesson. And he wasn’t the only one. «The Russians demand that Hirohito be placed at the top of the list of war criminals. Chang Kai-Chek demands him with more serious titles and England, still outraged by the disaster in Singapore, also requests it, as well as Australia and New Zealand,” adds the reporter. Numerous groups called for him to be executed. And not because he was the visible head of the enemy that had resisted the Allies the most, but as the ultimate – but not direct – responsible for massacres, concentration camps and human experimentation.
humble gesture
During those, Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Southwest Pacific and Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, arrived in Japan; in the midst of a tension that threatened to end with Hirohito hanging. The resentment was such that some officers such as Courthney Whitney, chief of the General Staff, urged him to summon the Emperor to his presence to demand submission: “Summon him. Humble him. Force him to beg for his throne or, better yet, get rid of him and his entire horde of parasites. The Monarchy has ended in Japan. But the soldier flatly refused under a simple argument that he left written in his memoirs: “To summon the Emperor would be to insult him and make him a martyr in the eyes of his people. I prefer to wait for him to come to the event on his own initiative.
As expected, the Emperor requested a meeting with him. What the American did not suspect is that he was going to offer to take the blame. “Hirohito nobly offers himself to the trial of the military court saying that he accepts responsibility for all political and military decisions made by his people in the course of the war,” says the journalist. MacArthur was impressed, as he wrote after World War II: “He was an Emperor by birth, but in that moment I had before me Japan’s first full-fledged gentleman.” That gesture touched the general’s heart. To such an extent that he appeared before President Truman and stated that he would defend that man with a million soldiers if anyone tried to hang him. It worked, since they deleted his name from the list of those on trial.
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