No single event in the occupation better exemplified MacArthur’s grand style. His aides skillfully parsed the basic Allied and American documents to confirm his sweeping authority. He seized a decisive moment to interpret his instructions in a manner no one else had even dreamed of—for no other person in or close to a position of authority had ever suggested or even imagined that the Americans might write a constitution for Japan. The grandiloquent enunciation of principles—constitutional monarchy, absolute pacifism, abolition of feudalism—also was typical, as was the delegation of the mere
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