Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

What Fellers was disclosing to the emperor’s aide was the gist of a secret cable from MacArthur to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the army chief of staff. In this response to Washington’s call for an investigation of the emperor’s war responsibility, MacArthur pulled out all the stops in defending him. “Investigation has been conducted,” the supreme commander had informed Eisenhower on January 25, and no evidence had been found that connected Hirohito to political decisions during the past decade. MacArthur characterized the emperor as “a symbol which united all Japanese,” and warned that if he were indicted the nation would experience “a tremendous convulsion,” “disintegrate,” initiate a “vendetta for revenge . . . whose cycle may well not be complete for centuries if ever.”