General Macarthur And The Emperor

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General Macarthur And The Emperor

General MacArthur and the Emperor
If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it was the image of General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito standing side by side during their historic first meeting on September 27, 1945. In it, a casually dressed MacArthur towers over the stiff, formally attired Emperor. What does it say? asks historian Carol Gluck. It says, I'm MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, and I'm in charge. For millions of Japanese, it brought home in an entirely new way the notion that they had lost the war.
General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito were considered to be two of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century. The ambiguity surrounding their roles in leading Japan before and after the war make one realize how complex (and just plain strange) they actually were. To many of his subjects, Hirohito was the emperor of heaven, not really a man at all, but the living incarnation of Japan. No matter what you may know about the two men, their lives provide an interesting perspective into how the running and occupation of japan worked.
Emperor Hirohito was installed as Crown Prince at the age of fifteen, Hirohito attained what was called the Chrysanthemum Throne (dont ask why) in 1926 when his father, the Emperor Yoshihito died. Because his father had been weak and sickly, Hirohito ruled more in his grandfathers shadow, the great Emperor Meiji, who presided over Japan's ridiculously funny late-19th-century opening up to the West and modernization. Even before assuming the throne, many web sites that could have been actually made-up say that Hirohito reflected the same fascination with the West, especially after his six-month tour of Europe in 1921, where he picked up a lasting taste for Western food and clothes. Personally, I have a hard time believing that a vacation when he was nine could have possibly affected him so profoundly, but it seems to have been shown at least partially true in 1975, when he visited the United States, meeting John Wayne, conversing with President Ford, and receiving a Mickey Mouse watch he supposedly wore for years. In between, however, he presided over one of the largest and most costly military ventures since Hannibal. In the years after the war, the accepted version of events holds that Hirohito was essentially a pawn of the militarists who gained control of the government shortly after he took the throne. MacArthur, convinced he needed the Emperors help (that...

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