Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
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Message 1.Β
Posted by youngjerry (U7266788) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
After WW2 why was the Japanese Emperor allowed to resume his normal duties in Japan and escape execution from the Nuremberg War Trials Tribunal?
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Message 2
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
As with all post-war settlements throughout history, the aim of the victors was to establish a 'new order' that would serve their interests in the future, rather than to 'do justice' to aggressors or whatever.
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Message 3
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
Nuremberg dealt with war crimes in Europe. Senior Japanese officers and officials were tried at the Tokyo Tribunal, which began in May 1946 and ran for 31 months.
The questions on the guilt of the Japanese emperor were always complex. Formally, he was head of the military as well as head of state, and it was not very credible that the war could have been waged without his consent. On the other hand there was a long Japanese tradition of the emperor being a figurehead for a (military) government, giving his blessing to whatever the most powerful people in the country wanted. Between this, it had become extremely vague where the boundaries of his responsibility lay. The major decisions of Japanese policy were taken in council with the emperor present; but it was rare for him to actually say something on these occasions -- others voiced his opinions for him. On the other hand, he wielded considerable influence in informal discussions.
Such separation of formal and real power is in line with a long Japanese tradition, but it also is a characteristic of heredity monarchy in any form that the monarch cannot be blamed when things go wrong: That would undermine the monarchy itself. Instead, somebody else has to carry the responsibility. The Japanese defendants stubbornly stuck to this principle, assuming all responsibility and doing their best to shield the emperor.
The prosecution was of course heavily dominated by the American government and military, and they chose not to prosecute the emperor. The terms of the Japanese surrender had included the provision that the emperor would remain in place, and an attack on Hirohito's position would have shaken the foundations of the new government that MacArthur was trying to create. Two of the judges criticized this policy, and one went so far as voting against the conviction of any of the defendants because he considered that the absence of the emperor among them made the trial unfair.
The case of the criminal responsibility of the emperor was also intertwined with the general accusation made by the prosecutor, that there had been a lengthy and criminal conspiracy by the Japanese leadership to wage a war of aggression. With hindsight, it is probably more accurate to say that the loose coalition of warring factions that made up the Japanese government, stumbled into the war because they could not think of a way to avoid it without losing face. -
Message 4
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 4th July 2010
I should add that the emperor by no means "resumed his normal duties" as understood by the Japanese. They themselves were probably divided on what those were, from the aristocracy and the military officers who self-identified with the emperor, to the man in the street who didn't actually care that much about the distant, aloof emperor.
MacArthur and his staff re-invented the emperor. They wrote a new constitution, made him semi-renounce his divine status, dragged him out of the court circles, and sent him to tour the country, greeting the crowds like a modern monarch would. (His escort of US soldiers was not included in the published photographs.)
The Americans were purposely trying to recruit the emperor as a symbol of the new Japanese state they wanted to build. The Japanese took it in their stride, seeing (with some justification) connections with the equally revolutionary acts and statements of the Meiji emperor. -
Message 5
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Monday, 5th July 2010
Whilst, as usual, Mutatis is correct in the meat of his points, he also stated : "...The terms of the Japanese surrender had included the provision that the emperor would remain in place..."
This is incorrect. The Japanese surrender was unconditional (see below for the text of the surrender). The surrender document says :
"The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate these terms of surrender."
Whilst the Emperor was left in place, the government most certainly was not. So, while the wording is not explicit, US power in the matter was more or less absolute.
The decision to allow the Emperor to stay was entirely political. He could, and, in my opinion, should, have been tried. He could have been forced to abdicate in favour of another male relative. Japan could have been turned in to a republic.
It was a pragmatic decision, mot a moral one.
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Message 6
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Tuesday, 6th July 2010
Despite the oblique nature of communication, there is sufficient evidence the Emperor influenced decision making
In interviews before his trial, Tojo stated that the Emperor was the ultimate authority.
I think those in the Occupied countries as well as many POWs were incredulous that he was not put to trial, even more so that he continued in public life for 40 years thereafter -
Message 7
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Friday, 9th July 2010
While the surrender remained officially "unconditional", it was not offered, even after the nuking, until reassurances were given by the US regarding respecting the emperor's position and dignity. Oral diplomatic communication between East and West are always highly subject to misunderstanding, but in this case each side new that what was being promised was that the emperor would keep his throne and not subjected to unnecessary humiliation.
Hirohito was anxious to fulfill his duty to his people by making defeat and occupation as palatable as possible and MacArthur quite accurately understood how to use him to best effect.
MacArthur, while encouraging (requiring?) the emperor to present and unprecedented public and human face to Japan, held himself back from public view. Which together with other factors probably contributed to that generation of Japanese transfering some of their veneration of the emperor to General MacArthur. They never understood why "their" general, a godlike figure in Japan was given the degree of praise and honor in America that it seemed to them his benevolence and wisdom warranted. (I am not saying he was all those things but was seen to be so by a majority of Japanese by the end of the occupation years). -
Message 8
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
cmedog
I presume that you left out a "not" somewhere in your last post.. I do not know too much about MacArthur's standing apart from the spectacular fall when he seemed to be suggesting a willingness to take on the right of escalating the Korean War to a nuclear level.
Field Marshall Montgomery's "Memoirs" seem to feature a greater willingness of US commanders to take heavy losses and perhaps the extremism of the Japanese has been used too exclusively to explain just how costly all that island-hopping etc was...And it was all a precursor to the first use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the Japanese were quick to exploit on racial grounds, pointing out that this terrible weapon had not been used in Europe. Probably it was not yet ready by May 1945, but it made a good propaganda point.
MacArthur's other claim to fame seems to have been the way that he deployed tanks and flame-throwers to disperse the ex-GI Bonus Marchers from their encampment in Washington in the c1932. The famous quote was "Thank God we have someone who knows how to deal with a rabble."
So all in all one would imagine that opinions about MacArthur in the USA were mixed, especially as he went on to show in Japan how effectively a "command economy" could work. Too close to Communism and Nazism.
Cass -
Message 9
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
You are right, the "not" was inadvertently left out. Actually MacArthur was held in high regard by most Americans, but it was mixed and he was more popular in the Japan that he ruled than in the America that he served.
The only really good propaganda points are those that are based on factual reality rather than ignorance . No "probably" to it. The testing of the bomb at was July 16, long after victory in Europe.
While many chose to make issue with the nuking of Japan now, no one did at the time. While the Japanese indeed see themselves as victims in that regard, the only ones that I see making a racial point of it are non-Japanese or those Japanese who themselves are westernized and have absorbed the use of and misuse of the power of racial accusations in modern western cultures. For the Japanese, that is a pot that can't find a kettle blacker than itself.
The occupation government in Japan faced a major threat from a sizable communist movement that it was successful in defeating politically as were subsequent national governments. The necessity of unusual measures to stave off chaos and starvation in a nation as destroyed as Japan has no relationship to any debate about the validity of competing economic and social theories for normal conditions. No reasonable person expected an Asian nation deeply rooted in heirarchy and obedience to authority to just wake up one Tuesday and begin abruptly functioning as an individualistic liberal society, especially in the midst of severe distress.
For all his faults, MacArthur was politically by no means a fascist or communist, and hated both. Other than simpletons who think anyone in Uniform is a fascists, he was never thought to be either. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
cemdog47
Re the Japanese propaganda use of Hiroshima this came up recently on another thread on which the whole question of the role of Japanese forces under Allied authority after the Armistice in Indonesia and possibly parts of Malaya/Burma, and in what became Vietnam, where Japnese forces had supported a Vichy French rule, until the fall of the Vichy regime. In both places they continued their "Asia Co-Prosperity" theme of Asia for Asians, criticising "Western Christian" values and Democracy. They definitely supported nationalist movements and used the "what if" argument about whether "Westerners" would have used nuclear weapons on "their own".
This certainly is the line taken by Michael Edwardes in his book on Asia in the European Age.
Regard attitudes to Hiroshima at the time I recently read a selection of articles on government and politics published in 1968, and one of them featured the failings of Cabinet Governmen. With very modern resonance for the Iraq Enquiry it was alleged that many things tended to get "nodded through" when people were almost nodding off. Apparently there were some in the Attlee Cabinet who felt that they had not really been briefed adequately about this new super-bomb and, had they possessed full knowledge they would have voted against its use.
But the sometimes people do not listen to things that they do not wish to hear.. In English law silence gives consent.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
For all their rhetoric about the "Co-Prosperity Sphere", it has to be remembered that the Japanese nationalism definitely had a racist side. And talk about an Asia for the Asians and support for nationalist movements did not exclude the assumption that there was a natural order among the Asian people.
The Japanese treatment of Korea (occupied since 1910) saw a brutal repression in which Koreans faced treatment as second-class citizens, combined with attempts to wipe out their national culture and traditions. The actions of the Japanese military in China were of course of such a nature that it required willing blindness to believe in "Co-Prosperity". There could be no doubt as to whose interests were primarily served by the concept.
For the Japanese, encouraging nationalist movements was a strategy that could have brought unpleasant surprises in the long term. In Indonesia, for example, they supported nationalist movements, but as their own occupation regime was extremely unpopular (not without reason) they might have regretted it, if the war had not ended in 1945. -
Message 12
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Whjy was Hirohito left in place in 1945? In a word - Macarthur. Macarthur had the insight to realise that the Japanese would be more likely to accept the change to a democratic, socially inclusive society if the Emperor stayed in place, albeit as a constitutional monarch. If he had destroyed every vestige of the Japanese governing system the danger would have been creating a Weimar-type situation in which the constitution would have been perceived as solely the product of military defeat and a charismatic figure might have arisen promising a return to imperial glory.
At the same time Macarthur did much to remove the mystique surrounding the Emperor, compelling Hirohito to issue a declaration renouncing his claim to divinity and having Hirohito attend upon him at his headquarters (rather than going to the Imperial Palace) resulting in the famous photo op where Macarthur, in his army fatigues, is shown towering over a diminutive Hirohito in his diplomatic morning suit. -
Message 13
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Re: Message 12.
Allan,
I read the same as you. Recently I have seen a documentary about the subject on the French-German channel Arte and they said the same. I remember that a female secretary with a high degree in law studies had to edit a Japanese constitution in a very short time. She searched all over the state departement for studies, even de Tocqueville if I recall it well.
I don't remember if it was a French, German, American or British documentary. Normally I do immediately after the broadcast some research for the sources. To track the bias and all that
. But on the first sight it seemed to me a "neutral" and to the point transmission.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 14
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th July 2010
Although modern historical research on both the US and Japanese side has tended to reduce the role of Macarthur and that the decision to retain the Emperor was part of US policy concerning Japanese reconstruction formulated during WWII:
(Only the abstract is available, I'm afraid).
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