.............................................................. >From the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed] Note: We store 100's of related "conspiracy posts" at: http://www.msen.com/~lloyd/oldprojects/recentmail.html From: "Alex Constantine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lloyd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Hirohito, behind it all along Date: Friday, August 25, 2000 9:44 PM U.S.News & World Report magazine. 8/28/00 Hirohito, behind it all along Book reveals emperor's real role in the war By Steven Butler America fought for Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II in order to put an end to fascism. But somehow American occupation forces led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur never dismantled the imperial system�or dethroned the emperor�in whose name the Japanese fought. History books tell us this is because Emperor Hirohito was all along a powerless pacifist, unable to influence Japan's political and military leaders, some of whom were hung for the crimes they committed in his name. A new biography of Hirohito out this month demolishes this myth of the passive constitutional monarch. Instead, argues historian Herbert Bix in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Hirohito was a full and active participant in the planning and prosecution of the war. He personally delayed the inevitable surrender for months essentially to protect his own skin and his divine imperial rule, while hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens and soldiers died. Afterward, he lied about his role and sacrificed his chief lieutenants to the hangman. And, Bix writes, he did so with the full knowledge and encouragement of MacArthur, who used Hirohito to smooth the progress of the occupation and to shore up Japan as an ally in the Cold War that provided key military bases in the western Pacific. "This book is a major embarrassment to the U.S.," says Japan scholar Chalmers Johnson. "It shows the degree to which we were willing to dissimulate in order to make Japan into a satellite of the U.S." The book's argument about Hirohito is less revisionist history than a pathbreaking study of the diaries, letters, and Japanese scholarship that have gradually become available following Hirohito's death in 1989. And it prompts a major reconsideration of both what happened during the war and why Japan cannot face the past. Divine right. "I go to some lengths in the book to say that Hirohito was not an evil man," says Bix, a historian at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Instead, he was a man of average intelligence and abilities, with no moral backbone, who received extensive military training and was carefully educated to believe the modern myth that he ruled by divine right. He was in name and fact the supreme commander of Japanese military forces�well briefed on all military activities from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in Nanjing, and willing and able to intervene and issue orders. "He became a war leader only gradually," says Bix, after acquiescing without protest to the mutinous advance of Japanese troops deeper into China. Some of Hirohito's advisers actually welcomed the U.S. atomic bombings and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war because they gave Hirohito the perfect excuse to surrender and save his rule amid growing dissension at home. Instead of having to take responsibility for his disastrous prosecution of the war, Hirohito was able to depict the surrender as an imperial gift of peace to Japan's people. While that may seem unsurprising, more shocking is the extent to which America helped promulgate that lie. With knowledge and support by American prosecutors, witnesses in the Tokyo war trials were carefully coached to hide Hirohito's true role, according to the documentation Bix cites. Last week, Bix lamented the fact that only about half of Japanese recently polled agreed that Japan had pursued a war of aggression. Instead, the facts of the war are obscured and remain, in part, taboo. "Because Hirohito was exonerated and carried on, it really made it difficult for Japanese to deal with the issue of war responsibility," says John Dower, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. "It really became a taboo subject in the U.S., too." The continued vibrancy of the imperial myth was shockingly on display in May when Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori told an audience that "Japan is a divine nation with the emperor at its center." Says Dower: "This is terrifying because it is the rhetoric of the worst period of militaristic indoctrination." The book will be read with intense interest in Korea and China, where resentment over the war remains strong. But Americans will also pay attention. James T. Murphy is a survivor of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, where he was a prisoner of war for over three years before being shipped to Japan for a year of slave labor in a copper mine run by Mitsubishi Mining. Murphy thinks the book could explain who was responsible for the horrible treatment he and other POWs received. "It had to be the emperor himself," he says. "We have suspected this but had no way of proving it." Murphy and other POWs intend to sue Japanese companies that may have profited from the illegal use of slave labor. "Money is not the problem here," says Murphy. "I want them to admit guilt for this. I want Mitsubishi to admit that they used James Murphy for a year as a slave laborer and that they are sorry for that." With Hirohito's true role revealed, Japanese might eventually find that easier. Forwarded for info and discussion from the New Paradigms Discussion List, not necessarily endorsed by: *********************************** Lloyd Miller, Research Director for A-albionic Research a ruling class/conspiracy research resource for the entire political-ideological spectrum. **FREE RARE BOOK SEARCH: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ** Explore Our Archive: <http://a-albionic.com/a-albionic.html> <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
