Emperor Hirohito and General MacArthur meeting for the first time, 1945. Many Japanese were extremely offended by this picture because of how casual MacArthur is looking and standing while next to the Emperor, who was revered as a god.
On September 27, 1945, Emperor Hirohito paid a visit to General Douglas MacArthur at the United States Embassy in Tokyo.
MacArthur then took Hirohito into a private room with just the Imperial translator, Okumura Katsuzo. The Supreme Commander and the Emperor, through his translator, spent forty minutes together and swore to keep the contents of their conversation secret. Although over the years some details leaked out.
According to the Americans, Emperor Hirohito offered to take responsibility for the war, unaware that MacArthur, over the objections of Stalin and the British, had removed his name from the list of war criminals, fearing guerrilla actions if he were to stand trial. This is contrasted by the Japanese. Thirty years after the meeting the Imperial translator, Okumura Katsuzo, released his memoirs which claimed that MacArthur was “a fawning courtier awed by his proximity to ‘You Majesty’ and extraordinarily solicitous in his comments”.
The Japanese government immediately banned the photo of the Emperor with MacArthur under the grounds that it damaged the imperial mystique, but MacArthur rescinded the ban and ordered all of the Japanese newspapers to print it. The photo was intended as a message to the Emperor about who was going to be the senior partner in their relationship.
After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the Americans took on the task of occupying Japan and reforming the militaristic nation into a modern country that would never again threaten its neighbors.
On 29 August 1945, MacArthur was ordered to exercise authority through the Japanese government machinery, including the Emperor Hirohito. Unlike in Germany, where the Allies had in May 1945 abolished the German state, the Americans chose to allow the Japanese state to continue to exist, albeit under their ultimate control. Unlike Germany, there was a certain partnership between the occupiers and occupied as MacArthur decided to rule Japan via the Emperor and the most of the rest of the Japanese elite. The Emperor was a living god to the Japanese people, and MacArthur found that ruling via the Emperor made his job in running Japan much easier than it otherwise would have been.
