ve been shown at least partially true in 1975, when he visited the United States, meeting John Wayne, conversing with President Ford, and receiving a Mickey Mouse watch he supposedly wore for years. In between, however, he presided over one of the largest and most costly military ventures since Hannibal. In the years after the war, the accepted version of events holds that Hirohito was essentially a pawn of the militarists who gained control of the government shortly after he took the throne. MacArthur, convinced he needed the Emperor’s help (that is to say, his submission) to run a smooth occupation, played no small part in establishing this version. With Hirohito's quiet manner, love of haiku and marine biology, the image of the peace-loving man who was powerless to stop his country's murderous expansion took hold. But in the decade since his death, a fuller inquiry into what happened has convinced a number of historians that this version, while partially true, is far from exact. Hirohito's ability to thwart the militarists was definitely limited -- he was more a symbol of the state than an actual ruler -- but he was not nearly as blameless as his defenders would have it. In his book, Tenno, historian Richard B. Finn sums it up this way: "The decisions that led to the war in 1941 were made unanimously by the cabinet, the emperor was fully informed about them, they were often made in his presence, he knew in advance of the plan to attack Hawaii, and he even made suggestions about how to carry it out." In September of 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, although previously a respected commander in the Pacific and later to be even better known in the U.S. for his exploits in Korea, was about to receive an even greater honor. For the sake of the occupation, and restructuring of Japan, the genral was to be referred to as the SCAP, or Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. From the start, the Occupation went hand in hand with ...
