Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (145 page)

Years afterward, T
j
's defense counselor revealed that at the time Whitney, Yonai, and even the chief prosecutor had been pressuring T
j
to testify the way MacArthur wanted, Hirohito had checked up on their progress in a phone call to Prince Higashikuni.
¹⁴

II

A difficult situation had met American chief prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan and his staff when they gathered in Tokyo on December 6 and 7, 1945, to organize the International Military Tribunal for the
Far East (IMTFE) and the International Prosecution Section (IPS), two groups that would soon be staffed by judges and prosecutors from eleven nations. GHQ had just gotten around to ordering the Japanese government to preserve official top-secret documents that could have a bearing on war crimes. Since the Occupation was operating indirectly through the Japanese government, IPS officials were unable to check pertinent ministry records until January 3,1946.
¹⁵

More important, Keenan found that MacArthur had been directed by a policy paper sent to him from Washington on September 12, and a Joint Chiefs order based on it of October 6, to draft a charter for an international court and to establish a unified prosecution organ (the IPS). The policy document (SWNCC 57/3) restricted what the IPS could do and reserved to MacArthur alone “the power to reduce, approve, or…alter” any punishments meted out. Its last paragraph, no. 17, instructed him to “take no action against the Emperor as a war criminal” without an explicit directive from Washington, thereby leaving open the possibility of his indictment. The supreme commander was to operate under orders from Washington and at the same time be an international civil servant, the representative of those Allied Powers who had signed the instrument of surrender and would now be asked to send judges and prosecutors. MacArthur's dual role and the way he played it added to the complexity of the ensuing trial. It blurred the nature of the tribunal's authority, and made it inevitable that the defense would claim that the Tokyo trial was, de facto, an American proceeding.
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At the beginning of 1946, the financial resources of the Imperial Household Ministry had been frozen, its staff downsized, and its sources of information curtailed. In order for Hirohito and his advisers to plan effectively for the forthcoming war crimes trials, new information sources had to be tapped. Consequently Matsudaira Yasumasa drew on the expertise of a secret Army Ministry
research group that since the surrender was continuing its work but within the legal section of the Demobilization Bureau. Col. Matsutani Makoto, leader of the group, had participated in wartime planning and had served as secretary to Army Ministers Sugiyama and Anami, as well as Prime Minister Suzuki. The colonel had tried unsuccessfully to reach Hirohito, via Kido's secretary, with the plea that as the war was obviously lost, it had to be ended. Now Matsutani and his group were examining damage-control measures for the forthcoming war crimes ordeal.

Their work began with a series of secret conferences held on January 3, 4, and 5, 1946, that were attended by elites from the private and imperial universities, the Bank of Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, and Ministry of Commerce and Industry, as well as by Matsudaira, representing Hirohito. Also present and contributing significantly to the conference's objectivity were Marxist historian Hirano Yoshitar
and political scientist Yabe Teiji—the former, Marxist or not, had stoutly supported the War of Greater East Asia, while Yabe was a longtime advocate of Japanese-style fascism. The conferees concluded that during the American occupation, Japan's politics, economy, and thought would develop steadily and positively for about two years. Debate on the monarchy would gradually intensify in step with Soviet exploitation of ideological confusion.

Their final report emphasized the need to spread but also control “cooperative democracy” in every area. The moderating assumption was that any real revolution in popular consciousness could be avoided if the emperor were retained as a “centripetal force” and “symbol”—in other words, as a concession to the irrational and traditional aspects of Japanese society. The war crimes trial would be a “political” spectacle, best dealt with from behind the scenes. Friendships with the judges and the lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense should be cultivated. The line for the defense should emphasize the army's sole responsibility for the war, and no hint of responsibility should be allowed to touch Hirohito.
The trial should be used to preserve and defend the state, and to this end individual defendants should be given minor priority.
¹⁷

Nevertheless, Hirohito and his aides could not be sure he would escape interrogation either as witness or defendant, so in March 1946, five of his aides helped him to prepare his defense. The Japanese press was then filled with speculation that the war trial indictments would focus mainly on responsibility for spreading the war to the United States and Britain. Thus Hirohito and his aides felt the need to defend mainly on this issue rather than his role in the China war. Questions that MacArthur's headquarters wanted answered were conveyed to them by the newly appointed liaison officer between the palace and GHQ, Terasaki Hidenari, whose American wife had spent the war years in Japan and was a relative of General Fellers. The emperor's aides posed these questions to him and took down his responses.

There were five dictation sessions extending over eight hours. Terasaki then wrote out, in pencil, certain portions of this longer stenographic transcript on the basis of notes compiled and selected largely by Inada Sh
ichi, the director of the Imperial Palace Records Bureau. Terasaki's account is dated June 1, when the Tokyo trial had been in session for nearly one month. Work on the larger dictated text—originally entitled “The Emperor's Account of the Secret History of Sh
wa”—from which Inada made his notes, continued into late July. After that time the text, which Terasaki had no hand in making and may never even have seen, was retitled “Record of the Emperor's Conversations” [
Seidan haich
roku
].

The political intention behind the initial “monologue” was first to defend Hirohito from the Tokyo tribunal and second to generate information the Americans could use against those who would actually stand trial for Japan's war crimes. Hirohito approved of these purposes. He wanted his views clearly conveyed to General Headquarters, but he also wanted to defend General T
j
Hideki, whom he knew was being set up to take the fall for him.