Emperor Hirohito and Japan's Decision to Go to War with the United States

The Showa Emperor, better known in the United States as Emperor Hirohito, has been one of the most controversial figures in the history of the Second World War in the Pacific. Under the prewar Meiji Constitution of Japan, the emperor was sovereign of the state and commander in chief of the Japanese imperial forces, and above all he was the manifestation of divinity and a symbol of the national and cultural identity of Japan. Nevertheless, Emperor Hirohito escaped the war crimes trials and continued to reign in postwar Japan until his death in 1989 as “the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people” under the new constitution written by the Americans, who occupied Japan from 1945 until 1952. The center of the controversy lies in the question that haunted the emperor since the days of the Tokyo war crimes trial: if the emperor possessed the power to stop the war on August 15 in 1945, why did he permit the war to start in the first place?1 The question was originally raised by General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander for the Allied powers (SCAP), and his staff, who wanted to exclude the emperor from the war trials and use him for their own political and military expediency.2 The emperor turned out to be the most helpful ally of SCAP in his reform efforts in postwar Japan

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