The task, as Fellers and his men put it, was to “drive a wedge” between the military leadership and the emperor (with his subjects) by persuading the Japanese that “gangster militarists” had not only duped them but betrayed their sacred leader. The Western propagandists, in a word, were ready to take a hand in reimagining an emperor divorced from the policies imperial Japan had pursued in his name, under his authority, and with his active cooperation for almost two decades.
