This guy alleges that the US were 'kind' on Japan (only light tribunal?) after the war because they wanted to acquire the bio-warfare knowledge of the Japanese.
And the Japanese tested bio-bombs.
I suspect the real reason is close to the usually accepted story, though. Millions of Japanese thought the emperor was a living god. That's how many Americans viewed it then. It's a useful interpretive lens even now.
If the Emperor concedes and surrenders, all of his legitimacy transfers to whoever the Emperor says to listen to. MacArthur got the unofficial title gaijin shogun -- foreign Shogun, the shogun being the military dictator who ruled pre-Meiji Japan, in the name of the Emperor.
Dépose or kill the emperor and all bets are off. What would be institutionally legitimate in its place? How long to construct it? When you have an entire administration in place, it'd be awfully tempting to whitewash the imperial institution. Which is exactly what MacArthur did. Speaking of which, the personality of Douglas MacArthur dominates this whole topic. He had carte blanche. Complete unlimited authority. And he exercised it, often in ways not anticipated in Washington. He was an eccentric man and quite opaque as to his decision-making.
Genuine question: I thought it was well understood that his decision making was guided by a fear of Russian expansion, and that conservative measures (such as keeping the Emperor in place and several important politicians) were aimed at quickly reestablishing the country to avoid communist impetus from arising. Is this not the case?
I think perhaps the narrative, the evidence on-hand, primary sources, etc. could all be considered and as a body of historical evidence we could say the understanding from our perspective continues to evolve; but there's no world in which the history changes. Events, causality, arrow of time, etc.
It was clear from the start that the Emperor's involvement was being whitewashed. The Australian judge at the Tokyo trials, William Webb, argued publicly that Hirohito should be prosecuted, but it seems he could gather no political support. Since the trial, several books have covered this ground. This article by one such author gives a bit more context on the politics of the trials. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-12/tokyo-trial-70th-anni...)
Capture high-ranking Islamic clerics, give them a choice: "Go on TV and explain to everyone that Allah's will is for all good Muslims to throw down their weapons and surrender to the Americans. If you refuse, we'll put you on trial for war crimes."
[1] In this post I'm not taking a position on the morality or legality of the US taking such an action, either in WW2 or the War on Terror. I'm merely noting that:
- The US did this sort of thing with the Emporer in WW2, and it seemed to work.
- The US didn't do this sort of thing in Afghanistan / Iraq, and those wars were definitely same kind of overwhelming success story that WW2 was. (I don't dispute some key objectives were obtained: Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were eventually killed; and there has no been 9/11 level terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 itself.)
My understanding is that the US were worried about the communists and Japan's stability in general and decided not to unduly rock the boat.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...
I don't know how accurate this is, but its a good read.
Or using it against an actual military target.
The message would have been clear, we can annihilate you if we want and you don't surrender. But they choose to go against the civilian population simply, because they wanted the data, of what a bomb does to a city. And that by that time bombing civilians was already pretty normalized anyway, so trying to save civilian life simply was not an issue.
I'm not sure a demonstration would mean much if destroying a entire city didn't convince them.
1945 was about halfway between now and when slavery was still widely accepted as the norm since time immemorial.
Statistically you would have to expect attitudes of what amounts to "humanity" to have only been about halfway from slavery to what there is now. Anything considered more modern would only have begun to exist to a much smaller extent at the time.
It wasn't meant to rank the worst things humans have ever done (outside of slavery no matter the country, that is almost always a distraction to justify awful things other's have done), but they are both among the most awful things the US has specifically done to the world.
What this is referring to is the relative immunity Unit 731 got post-war in exchange for research results being handed over, which is a well-known historical fact.
Not to mention the reality that aside from some sense of justice, allowing any of these people their freedom is probably irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Which is to say that it's a gambit for valuable, empirical knowledge which for all intents and purposes, I would surmise, couldn't be elsewise obtained due to the moral standards of the West, or some theatrics which will have little consequence.
But I think the greater point that you are missing is that you can't walk over a country of 150 million people and achieve total power. Without large doses of good will, collaboration, and soft power, resistance gets in the way of every single goal an occupation has.
Nonsense. Quote "the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) trained and graduated nearly 6,000 linguists—the majority of whom were Japanese Americans." Source https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Military%20Intelligence%20Se...