THE LEADERS: Hirohito

Was Hirohito really as passive as history has painted him? Emperor Hirohito stood at the head of Japan’s war machine, yet after 1945, both the Japanese and the Americans painted him as a powerless observer. But is passivity just as bad as collusion? In this episode, Dan is joined by Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian History at the University of Edinburgh and strategy expert Professor Phillips O'Brien at the University of St Andrews to examine Japan's catastrophic wartime strategy, its army's brutality and debate how much of the responsibility for that lies with Hirohito. Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide warfare. If you would like to subscribe to Chris' substack, then it can be found at www. IlluminAsia.org http://www.illuminasia.org/. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore Phillips' book that inspired this series is called 'The Strategists' and is available now. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:15Speaker 01

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• 1:21Speaker 02

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• 2:01Dan Snow?

  Japanese emperor Hirohito died in January 1989. It happened peacefully, in his bed in Tokyo's Imperial Palace. He was pushing ninety years old. In his final moments, he was surrounded by members of his family. And after he passed away, court doctors washed the emperor's body and purified his clothing, in keeping with centuries of tradition. His daughter described his passing as peaceful. His son succeeded to the chrysanthemum throne. The world's longest, continuously running hereditary monarchy glided on.

• 2:47Dan Snow?

  And what followed his death could not have been in starker contrast the deaths and the legacies of his fellow Axis leaders: Hitler's sordid murder-suicide in the bunker under Berlin, and Mussolini's public hanging in a Milan town square.

• 3:10Dan Snow?

  And that suggests that Hirohito did something quite remarkable. He outlasted his wartime counterparts. He evaded war crimes investigations. He avoided having Japan's wartime record associated with his name. And he remained ruler of Japan until his death, four decades later, at which time Japan was one of the world's richest and most advanced nations, all of which is quite astonishing, given the brutality with which the Japanese fought the war across Asia and the Pacific: appalling civilian massacres in China, in Korea, Southeast Asia, violations of the Geneva Convention,

• 3:53Dan Snow?

  human experimentation, even evidence of cannibalism. And, on top of which, Japan in 1945 was in an absolutely ruinous state: its cities razed by firebombing and even atomic strikes.

• 4:15Dan Snow?

  In the years that followed the war, it became convenient for various constituencies that Hirohito's connection to that war should remain ambiguous, unclear. The Americans, for example, discovered that they needed him. They needed him as a symbol of continuity as they rebuilt Japanese society and pursued post-war aims in Asia. So in this episode of The Leaders, we are scrutinizing Hirohito's war. What did he know about Japan's brutal militarism? How much a role did he play in forging Japanese strategy? And I ask if he was passive, well, how is that different from collusion?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  He has much more power than people pretended he had after the Second World War. We have to understand there's an attempt to whitewash his influence after the war. Because people don't want to say he's powerful, they don't want him to carry the blame for the war.

• 5:18Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History at, and in this episode, we're examining the biggest wartime decisions of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito.

• 5:37Dan Snow?

  Hirohito was born into a kaleidoscopic world, one of both tradition but also transformation. He was born in April 1901. He was a son of the imperial house of Japan, the grandson of the Emperor Meiji, the ruler who'd restored imperial fortunes and overseen Japan's rapid modernization. As was normal for imperial children, poor things, he was separated from his parents shortly after birth. He was given to trusted aristocratic families to care for. He had an ultra-elite upbringing, as you can imagine. He was the sole pupil of a special school created just for him. During his youth, during that education, he developed a passion for marine biology. That became a lifelong interest.

• 6:22Dan Snow?

  But like all imperial children, he was sent down a military path. Age 11, he was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army as a second lieutenant. And that same year, upon the death of his grandfather, his father ascended to the throne, bringing Hirohito's own reign as emperor one step closer.

• 6:39Dan Snow?

  At age 20, he became the first Japanese crown prince to travel abroad. He later recalled that his time in Britain had been the happiest of his life. Six years later, following the death of his father, he assumed the role that he had been destined for and prepared for since his birth. Well, before his birth, he became the 124th Emperor of Japan. Now, unlike the other leaders we covered in this series, we don't have much in the way of personal accounts of Hirohito, or even official accounts, frankly. He was a private man. He gave few public appearances. But particularly after the war, he retreated from public life in favour of pursuing private hobbies and solitary research into scientific interests.

• 7:22Dan Snow?

  We know he had a monogamous marriage, which produced seven children. That broke from the tradition of emperors maintaining a large cohort of imperial concubines. There are some sources, but far fewer than relate to, say, Churchill or Hitler. It is difficult to penetrate Hirohito's motivation. And frankly, it's quite difficult to understand the inner workings of Japan's military decision-making. So to help me work it all out, I'm joined by some really truly brilliant contributors. First up, we've got Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh. He's going to try and shed some light on Japan's enigmatic imperial leader. Chris, the Japanese emperor has meant different things in different periods, hasn't it?

• 8:05Dan Snow?

  When he was born, what was expected of him and his family? What was expected of an emperor?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  He's expected really to be both at the centre of government, but not to be an absolute monarch. So if you kind of draw one of those little childish pictures of the constitution, all the lines point back to the emperor, you know, from the cabinet, from the diet, from various military officials. So in effect, he looks like he could be in complete control of everything, actually, including the judiciary as well. But in reality, he's expected to really sort of colour within the lines of the constitution. And I suppose you could say reign more than rule would be the ideal. And you have this funny sort of additional element with Japan, where when you have these imperial conferences with the emperor present... You get the etiquette of the ancient imperial court sort of bumping up against

• 8:52Speaker 04

  modern politics. So you've got modern politicians coming in who are cut and thrust type people, whereas the emperor deals in a much quieter, almost lethargic kind of imperial culture. So if he's asked a question, he might ask a question in return as a way of implicitly sort of hinting that he disagrees, or he might even lapse into complete silence or start reading poetry, again to try and hint at some elements of displeasure. But that can easily be misinterpreted, you know, whether accidentally or willfully.

• 9:21Dan Snow?

  Was he given a fitting education for the role he was going to play?

• 9:24Speaker 04

  So yes, he had all sorts of tutors around him. He had a particular interest, I think, in science, loved a bit of marine biology, had a little laboratory built for him in the grounds of the imperial palace. But he was also seriously interested in his role as a constitutional monarch, I think, very well educated in international affairs as well as imperial history. He seems to come across as a fairly cautious person, sort of liberal in his political instincts, an internationalist. He visited Great Britain in 1921, big fan of Britain and the Anglo-American powers. But I think he also was given in his upbringing a really powerful sense of just how far back the imperial institution goes in Japan. So he's got a very strong sense of his responsibility in maintaining this

• 10:09Speaker 04

  institution. And I think something that weighs greatly on him during the war is how does he manage Japan's predicament, which is largely the product of kind of overambitious military officers? How does he manage that so that the imperial institution can survive? In the end, for him, that's what it comes down to. He's the latest person at the helm of this very ancient ship, and it cannot sink on his watch.

• 10:33Dan Snow?

  You mentioned he's rather liberal in his political years before the outbreak of war. Can we see his influence in Japanese domestic or foreign policy?

• 10:42Speaker 04

  I think it's quite difficult to read that very successfully. It's funny because unlike someone like Churchill or Roosevelt or Truman, we don't have enough kind of personal documentation, you know, diaries or letters, et cetera, to get a real sense of the man's soul. So I think that's quite tricky. He's probably, of all the wartime leaders, he's the one to whom the idea of leader applies in the most indirect way only. So much of the time when we do get a sense of how he's feeling about things, it's, I think, for example, in the, in the early 1930s, and he's still a young man by this point, it's worth pointing out, he's only in his early 30s, himself at this time, he becomes quite frustrated with the idea that there are elements in the armed forces that he can't control,

• 11:26Speaker 04

  that may be doing things in the name of the emperor, but are actually going against his wishes. So I think an example of that would be, Japan has this presence on the mainland, the Chinese mainland already in the early 1930s, but very famously in the late part of 1931, a Kuomintang army on a pretext begins to take over Manchuria. And then in the early 1932, they declare Manchu Kuomintang as this independent state. You can see the emperor saying to his advisers, "These people are putting Japan in danger by doing this. They won't do what we want." And yet they're sort of using the kind of fig leaf of imperial interests to do it. So I think he has a real sense of frustration at the limitations on his power. And at the same time, people around him,

• 12:11Speaker 04

  who are probably less concerned with Hirohito himself than with the survival of the imperial institution, are advising him not to rebuke the army too directly. Because if he starts to do that, and you create a real sense of rift between the emperor and the army, then things could get quite sticky for the imperial institution quite quickly. So I think he has a real sense of frustration at the limits of his own power in the way that he's expected to wield it as a constitutional monarch.

• 12:40Dan Snow?

  It's very weird, isn't it, being threatened by the army, which is an institution on paper devoted entirely to your well-being and loyal to you, and yet you fear them.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  It must be hard, although, given that he's got an appreciation of history, really the last thousand years or so of his family's history have been very much the same, to be honest. Even if you go back to the heyday, you know, the time of Murasaki Shikibu, around the year 1000, the so-called kind of heyday of imperial power, really, the imperial family's being pushed around by wealthy families around it, told what to do, intermarriage with these families. You could argue, I think, that one of the reasons why the Japanese imperial family has survived all the way down to the 20th century is that it ends up being a really convenient source of legitimacy for whoever the latest real power play is to come along. You know, if you're a samurai who's just won a war and people haven't really heard of you,

• 13:31Speaker 04

  if you go along, visit the emperor, pay for some imperial palaces to be tidied up a little bit, then you can say, you know, I'm operating for the good of the country. So it's extraordinarily convenient, the imperial family, for these sorts of purposes. And I think if Hirohito had any appreciation, which I assure he did, of his family's history, then it's plus a chance, really, for his family.

• 13:51Dan Snow?

  Do you think that they might have made him a mere puppet?

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I think so. I think he could easily have become a prisoner of an even more assertive militarist faction within the army. I think what's really going on in the army, and this is where lots of the trouble, I think, begins, in the late 20s and the early 1930s, is that you get a younger generation of army officers who aren't old enough to remember when Japan used to be on the back foot internationally. They've grown up with Japan after the successful war with Russia, 1904 to 1905, after the alliance with Great Britain. You know, Japan is already a great power. They don't have much of a sense of Japan's potential weakness, and so they're constantly pushing the boundaries. I think their view, particularly of what's going on in mainland China and on the Asian continent more generally, is that in the 1920s, as Chiang

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Kai-shek and the nationalists are, starting to consolidate their power on the mainland, as the Soviet Union is consolidating itself in its eastern portion, Japan is really going to have to assert itself if it's not to lose its role on the Asian continent completely. You know, it's worth remembering that Japan has colonized Korea by this point. It has a very lucrative railway corridor in Manchuria at this point. And I think some strategists, and particularly the sort of the hot heads are thinking, if we don't assert ourselves more, then either Chiang Kai-shek or the Soviets will do it for us and we will be squeezed off the continent. That way of looking at things becomes really, really dominant in the army. And the emperor is a useful sort of figurehead in pursuing those sorts of policies.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  And so Hirohito finds himself having to play, I think, quite a difficult balancing act. But if he asserts himself too much, he rubs the army up the wrong way. If he doesn't do enough, then the army completely run rampant. So I think he's genuinely in a very difficult position.

• 15:38Dan Snow?

  For years, Japan had been eyeing up the resources of an area known as Manchuria. That's the modern day entirety of northeast China, including bits of Russia's far east. Taking advantage of China's political upheaval, China's division and weakness, Japan steadily tightened its grip on this territory. They pushed ever further south. Then came the crisis of 1937. There was a skirmish on the outskirts of Beijing. It was used a pretext for launching a full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. In the winter of that year, the Japanese captured and sacked Nanjing. They committed one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War, and that's saying something.

• 16:22Dan Snow?

  Mass murder of the city's civilians, disarmed Chinese soldiers, as well as rape and looting on an industrial scale. This is what we call the Second Sino-Japanese War. Well, in some ways, this marks the real beginning of World War Two. What do we know about his sort of role there?

• 16:41Speaker 04

  So I think at this point, Japan is really in trouble at home as well as abroad. So in 1932, the prime minister's been assassinated. There've been other political assassinations in the years that followed. There was an attempted coup in 1936 in Tokyo. So the volatility of politics at home, I think, is quite an important part of this picture. Abroad, Hirohito is constantly being assured by members of the armed forces that they are not interested in a full occupation of China. That what they want to do is make sure that Japan is secure in Manchuria and they want to stop Chinese attacks from China into Manchuria, which is causing a great deal of trouble. So Hirohito is constantly being assured that that's the limit of it, that we don't want to go any further.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  But then what you have in the summer of 1937, a series of incidents which really didn't need to go any further. I suppose the most famous one is at the Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing. If relationships were better at this point between the Japanese and the Chinese, equally they've sorted that away with a little bit of diplomacy between the two sides. But I think the rhetoric building up at home in Japan, and this is not just in the armed forces, but you see it in the Japanese media as well. There's a real sense that under Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese have been taught to hate and resent the Japanese and that if Chiang Kai-shek can be humbled, can be brought to heel, then relationships between the two sides can be improved. And I think in the same way, in China, they're being taught that the Japanese have a foothold

• 18:09Speaker 04

  in Beijing, the Japanese are in Shanghai as well, they have an armed presence there looking after their people who are living in Shanghai, they're there in Manchuria. There's a lot of anti-Japanese rhetoric on the Chinese side as well, all of which means by the time you get to the summer of 1937, neither side can really back down. And instead, you have the Japanese taking control of Beijing in August, going on to Shanghai, and then by the end of the year, going on to Nanjing as well. So this sort of lightning progress across really important parts of China. All the time back home, the emperor is constantly being assured that we aren't interested in all-out war with China. What we're trying to do is get Chiang Kai-shek to come to the table, negotiate something and bring all this to an end.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  And I think Hirohito, whether he believes that or not is really hard to determine. There's a lot of debate about Hirohito, but I think you really cannot paint him as someone who is a warmonger and a militarist. He's never really pushing for that kind of thing.

• 19:09Dan Snow?

  So from your point of view, how can we get close to his character? How do you think he's better described? What was he like?

• 19:15Speaker 04

  I have never heard him described, for example, as being a canny political operator. As close as we can get to his personality, I would say cautious to the point of being indecisive. So in that sense, I think he probably was quite ill-suited to the role. That said, you know, he's got a lot of advisers around him in the imperial court and then in the political cabinet, who simply want different things. When you've got the armed forces divided over what to do, whether they should prioritise the Chinese and the Russians, or whether they should worry more about the Americans and the British at sea, when you've got people in the political cabinet who are worried that the militarists have too much power over the nation's affairs and that they want to try and reassert the power of civilian politicians.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Japan is, you know, politically a complete mess in the 1930s and the early 1940s, and I think Hirohito is part of that. And it's hard to see, to be honest, whether even someone of a more forceful personality and perhaps of greater political intelligence could really have managed a situation that was constitutionally so fraught.

• 20:21Dan Snow?

  I think we got a sense from Chris that Hirohito, as a leader, at least in those early years, he was fairly benign, fairly ineffective. It's hard to paint him as a warmonger. He doesn't seem to have any driving passion for power or for imperial aggrandisement like Hitler or Stalin. But he also doesn't do anything practically to try and stop the aggressive policy course of his nationalist, expansionist military commanders. Perhaps Hirohito felt he was powerless to stop them, given the delicate balance between imperial power and the military and politicians in Japan at this time. So next I went to Philip O'Brien. He's a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, and fascinatingly,

• 21:06Dan Snow?

  he takes a slightly different approach. He believes that the emperor did have more agency than is often assumed. I find it fascinating, the lack of sources, this lack of clarity, allows brilliant historians to build different interpretations of Hirohito's imperial rule.

• 21:23Dan Snow?

  Philips, how much power, how much influence does the Emperor of Japan have in the 1930s?

• 21:29Speaker 03

  I think we can say now, he does have, if he chooses to use it, a great deal of authority to stop. He could have stopped any invasion, or almost any military operation, if he had wanted to, because the military will respect his desires. It's probably the only person the military will respect in Japan. They don't respect civilian leadership a great deal. They don't even respect each other, so the army and navy don't communicate a great deal. But the Emperor has a really powerful position at the top of the hierarchy, and if he does not give his assent, it is very difficult to see the military doing something like Pearl Harbor, say. They're not going to attack Pearl Harbor unless they know the Emperor is behind them.

• 22:14Dan Snow?

  So where's the strategic direction in Japan coming from?

• 22:19Speaker 03

  Well, Hirohito is not what we'd call a great, grand strategist. He doesn't fit the paradigm of war leader. He doesn't give speech. He's not there making a great speech, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt, or a Hitler, or a Mussolini. He just doesn't do that. Most Japanese had never heard his voice until 1945. He doesn't make political pronouncements. He doesn't write things that people read. So he doesn't fit the paradigm of a war leader at all. On the other hand, he is obsessed with military operations in one way. He has one overriding goal, and that is to protect the Japanese imperial system with himself and his family at the head.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  He believes he is a divine ruler, divinely inspired, and under all conditions, he wants to keep the imperial system in place in Japan. And what he believes is that military success is a key part of that. So if they can seem military or if they are military successful, that reinforces the imperial system with him at the top.

• 23:24Dan Snow?

  So he was a believer in military adventurism to cement his family's position within Japan?

• 23:30Speaker 03

  Adventurism might be too strong. He certainly is a believer in the use of military operations for political purposes. The great example, I should start earlier, is probably 1937. And in 1937, there is an incident, the Marco Polo Bridge incident in China, which begins the Japanese invasion of China. That was not a deliberate plan. The Japanese did not expect to invade all of China in 1937. But there's an incident, the army presses on. And at that point, Hirohito plays a fascinating role. He didn't start it, but he's not going to stop it. And what he actually starts arguing for is, okay, let's fight a big battle and win it.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  He actually says to the army, all right, if we're in this thing now, it's important that we fight a decisive battle, emerge victorious, and that will support the regime.

• 24:25Dan Snow?

  The old decisive battle myth. One big push, break the enemy.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  It's an entire Japanese concept that repeats itself endlessly. Pearl Harbor is supposed to be a decisive battle. So they're always looking for a great engagement that will win a war or turn the tide of a war. I would say Hirohito has a deeply flawed view of how war is fought. But that is a consistent view. Even to the end, the planning was to fight in Japan, to fight such a destructive battle that the Americans will agree to some kind of peace deal.

• 25:02Dan Snow?

  What does Hirohito want? What does Japan want? An empire? Economic self-determination? Or Taki? What do they want?

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Well, what he wants is, I think, Japan to be as large and powerful as possible. It's a bit like Mussolini in the sense where exactly should the Japanese empire be? Is not entirely clear. Certainly, he's happy when they take parts of China. He's worried about getting involved in too much of a morass in China by trying to fight the old war. Does he actually want to go all the way down to the Dutch East Indies? And what we know of now is Indonesia. So I don't think he has a fully thought about idea. This is the area of the Japanese empire. But he believes in military force as a sign of Japanese greatness, which reinforces the power of his rule.

• 25:52Dan Snow?

  Go listen to our leaders series more after the break.

• 26:03Dan Snow?

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• 28:47Dan Snow?

  In the summer of 1940, Japan formally joined Germany and Italy in the Axis Alliance by signing the Tripartite Pact. These powers bonded over their shared hatred of communism, their sense that the world order was stacked against them. In a world of rich global empires, they wanted their share. Japan's been fighting in China for years, incredibly costly. Japan's Axis ally, Germany, is fighting the Soviet Union. Japan could have engaged there. Why on earth head thousands of miles east and strike the US in Hawaii?

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Because they had miscalculated, and they could not admit that they had miscalculated.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  The Japanese regime had put itself in a terrible strategic bind in the second half of 1941. What they had done is they had calculated that Germany had won the war. That's it. Europe's gone German. So they can start taking advantage of the remains of the old European empires. And what they do is in the summer of 1941, they occupy a large part of what we know now, which is Vietnam, which is part of the French Empire. They'd sort of insert themselves into Vietnam. They had not anticipated the American reaction. And Roosevelt's reaction to this was far harsher than they expected.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  And what Roosevelt says is, okay, we're going to embargo oil on Japan. Now, that is, we can't understand just how dramatic that is now, because what Roosevelt is saying is your economy will collapse in three years. That's it. Because Japan has no oil. None. They didn't have a single drop of oil in the country that they could make. They were getting all that oil from North and South America, or almost all of it. And Roosevelt's saying, you're not going to get any oil. So that literally means all your power is going to go once you go through your stockpiles. And the Japanese just weren't expecting that kind of dramatic reaction. And that means they're sort of stuck. They either have to admit that they have miscalculated and pull out of Vietnam. And indeed, the Americans say, at this point, you've got to pull out of China, too. Tell you what, we put this embargo on you, you've got to pull out of Vietnam, and you've

• 31:00Speaker 03

  got to start getting out of China. You've got to admit you have totally miscalculated, or your other alternative is to go to war. And what's interesting is to save face as much as anything else, not to, in their minds, immediately imperil the regime by telling the Japanese people they had screwed up, that they would rather risk going to war with the USA. It is really an extraordinary decision in many ways because it is trying to save face. And they're unable to admit that they had made such a disastrous miscalculation. And Hirohito is part of that, without a doubt.

• 31:35Dan Snow?

  Why was the US so determined? It had been trying to avoid war with Germany in Europe, in the North Atlantic space. Why the really quite aggressive mood to suspend oil exports to Japan over Southeast Asia? Because it's just an area of greater American focus and interest?

• 31:52Speaker 03

  The Roosevelt administration thought that this was a coordinated Axis move. Their nightmare in the summer of 1941, this is the summer where Hitler attacks the Soviet Union, is that actually the Axis is on the march together. And so what they see is Japan taking advantage of what's going on in Europe, and this is all part of a great plan. Roosevelt actually doesn't want war with Japan at that point. He thinks they're going to have to back down. Roosevelt is looking at it from what we call a rationalist point of view. So Roosevelt's like, well, they're not going to attack the United States. We produce 20 times what they produce. It's not a rational calculation. They will have to back down. So he thinks in many ways, he's slamming the Japanese so hard, it will keep them out

• 32:35Speaker 03

  of the war, and that means he can continue to focus on Europe. What then the Japanese do is not what he's expecting in the summer of 1941. They start opting more and more to attack the Americans.

• 32:47Dan Snow?

  Is Hirohito present at those discussions? Is he active?

• 32:52Speaker 03

  He's informed every step of the way. And indeed, he changes the prime minister, who's a man called Konoe, who actually doesn't want war with America, with his, Hirohito's chosen prime minister, Hideki Tojo, who we know of as the sort of the Japanese leader when the war starts. Tojo is chosen by Hirohito, who likes Tojo a great deal. So Hirohito knows exactly what the Japanese are planning to do. He has consulted on it, and he supports it. This is the kind of thing that was covered up after the war. It's just how positive he was about the war, how he, by the way, had been warned by people

• 33:34Speaker 03

  that this could go wrong, by his younger brother, who was very worried about what it means, and how he had changed the government to be more pro-war. So he, you could argue, has the most responsibility in the Japanese system for starting the war.

• 33:49Dan Snow?

  We have a view tinged by Hollywood of sort of ultra-formal silent meetings in which Hirohito sits there and eventually nods one way or another and there's no discussion. Do you think there would have been robust back and forth, would there have been debate in Hirohito's presence involving him?

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Well, debate is an interesting, I mean, there would have been difference of opinion. It would have been expressed often quite subtly. There wouldn't have been shouting or screaming in front of Hirohito, but there would have been people presenting different views. And then, of course, often he would express himself more to intimates in the non-formal setting about what he believed. So often, the most interesting information isn't what we hear about was said in a meeting, which, by the way, the meeting descriptions often are very protective of Hirohito. It's what he would say afterwards to his brother or other intimates. So there was an absolute difference of opinion. We know that because the prime minister was changed, that they were making a war government. And he would have been aware that there was a faction that did not want to do Pearl Harbor, and

• 34:50Speaker 03

  he made sure that they were out of power.

• 34:52Dan Snow?

  The attack on America at Pearl Harbor, is that the beginning of a imagined process of pushing American forces right back to the West Coast? Or is it a short, sharp shock by the Japanese Empire time and in their fever dreams come some kind of compromise?

• 35:09Speaker 03

  The Japanese were assuming two things when they do Pearl Harbor. They are assuming the Germans are going to win. They were gambling on a German victory. And a German victory means that they in a sense are going to get their way and the US is going to have to accept some kind of deal. On the other hand, what the Japanese don't have is any logical plan to bring the war to a conclusion. They knew how to start the war against the US, but their way, discussion of how the war might end was very vague. So it was the kind of thing where they would deal such hard blows to the Americans that eventually the Americans would have to come to some kind of deal with them. They knew they couldn't conquer the USA. They weren't detached from reality in that sense. However, what they

• 35:52Speaker 03

  got wrong was the idea that the US would tire of the war somehow, tire quite quickly and reach a deal. That's just a miscalculation of the Japanese. You might say it is one of the most dangerous war-starting decisions because they literally had no way to end the war they were starting.

• 36:11Dan Snow?

  And the timing is so extraordinary because then the weeks before Pearl Harbor, Hitler's Wehrmacht is moving steadily towards Moscow. The decision taken at that time is so extraordinary because two weeks later, Hitler's forces were in catastrophic disarray outside Moscow, but the deed had been done.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yep, and the German successes in November 1941 are definitely in the Japanese mind, confirming their decision to attack Pearl Harbor. So it's going together. They really do believe that this is part of an overall Axis victory.

• 36:39Dan Snow?

  So Phil, we're beginning in 1942. The US has been damaged at Pearl Harbor, but not nearly as dramatically as Japan may be thought at the time. Aircraft carriers escaped, many of the battleships razed, dockyard infrastructure, oil, intelligence, all untouched. The Japanese then go on this tear through, well, actually in all different directions at once, which is probably a mistake. But what are they trying to do in early 1942?

• 37:03Speaker 03

  What they're doing is trying to set up an empire with all the resources it needs to look after itself. So the Japanese are trying to set up a perimeter, which will give them oil and bauxite for aluminum and rubber in Malaya. So they're trying to set up a resource-rich empire, which can supply itself with all the raw materials to continue producing the raw material to hold the US off. That's the overall calculation. So that's why, once they attack Pearl Harbor, they actually don't push west, they push south, because that's where all the resources are, in modern-day Indonesia, modern-day Malaysia, places like that. And they're very successful in that. So they basically put together this resource-rich empire.

• 37:47Dan Snow?

  So it's so circular, isn't it? Because you start a war with the US to allow you to conquer an empire that will allow you to fight a war with the US.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Yep, that's in a sense what they're doing. Yeah, they're trying to fight a war with the US to get the resources to exhaust the US and keep the empire going. But even though with the resources they have, they don't really do the maths, that with the resources they conquer, they're still not going to be able to produce anything like the US can produce. That's the odd thing, is that you would think they could have done the calculations, but they're just not there. But they do put together this empire by the summer of 1942, it's there. And they do have quite a, you know, a large defensive perimeter, but then the war starts going wrongly for them from midway onwards, people would say. And their Hirohito plays a more assertive role often than is understood. Now, again,

• 38:36Speaker 03

  he is not ordering troops around. He's not Hitler. He's not saying you must do this. But the really important campaign in the Pacific War in the second half of 42 is Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal is one of the most important attritional engagements of the war. It goes on a long time. The Americans land in September of 1942, and it goes well into 43 before the Japanese pull out. It's one of the longest engagements of the entire Pacific War. And it eats up material, far more than, say, any battle like Midway or Pearl Harbor. The overall losses at Guadalcanal, in terms of aircraft and equipment, far larger. What Hirohito does is he constantly stresses on his military, you must try to hold Guadalcanal, you must

• 39:21Speaker 03

  show spirit, you must take risks to hold this, as he's trying to basically hold the Americans as far away as possible. And he creates or makes this a far more destructive battle for Japan than it has to be, because he is urging his military to keep trying to hold Guadalcanal.

• 39:41Dan Snow?

  Pouring more resource into the meat grinder, rather than cleverly withdrawing and fighting elsewhere.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Absolutely. He doesn't trade land for time. He actually tries to hold the extreme and loses a huge amount of force at the extremities.

• 39:56Dan Snow?

  You just mentioned the Battle of Midway. Let's come on to Midway. There was a very daring US attempt to bomb Japan using aircraft carriers that escaped Pearl Harbor. To what extent did that drive Hirohito and the Navy to try and neutralize those aircraft carriers by ambushing them at the islands of Midway, right in the middle of the Pacific?

• 40:18Speaker 03

  I mean, the big thing about Midway is it's part of the Japanese decisive battle idea. They had Pearl Harbor, and it turns out a few months later, well, actually, the American Navy has not been wiped out, that it's still there and still has some aircraft carriers. I mean, what Pearl Harbor did was sink the battleships, but by the spring of 1942, it's quite clear the battleships aren't that important. So the losses the US Navy suffered at Pearl Harbor were not catastrophic losses, and that the real strength it has is in aircraft carriers. So the Japanese need to have a way to engage the American Navy and try and destroy what's left of the American Navy. And that's, I think, the genesis of the Midway campaign. That Midway itself, of course, is an island in the middle of the Pacific. I mean, it's probably one of the most isolated islands in terms of things

• 41:03Speaker 03

  around it are really a long way away, but it's sort of on the way to Pearl Harbor. And the Japanese view is if they attack Midway, the Americans will have to defend it.

• 41:12Dan Snow?

  It will force the Americans to send everything into battle.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  And so therefore, the Japanese will have the initiative, and they will do something that will draw the Americans out desperately. And as the Americans come out to try and hold Midway, they can sink them. What they do not know is the Americans know the Japanese are doing this. So the Americans are not going to be drawn out. The Americans are there waiting for them, and the Japanese are actually steaming into a trap.

• 41:38Dan Snow?

  Do we think Hirohito was involved in that decision?

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Midway fits Hirohito's general conception of war, going out, showing spirit, taking the war to the enemy, and hopefully fighting a decisive battle. So he was not opposed to Midway. I mean, in fact, Midway is almost his archetypal kind of campaign. It's one of the reasons the Japanese, I would say, lose the war, and Hirohito is a terrible war leader, because they are always looking for an event to change what is actually a war of production.

• 42:07Dan Snow?

  And Midway, the Japanese carrier force ends up being obliterated. It is the end of any offensive capability, really, of Japan in the Pacific.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they lose four of their six best carriers at the Battle of Midway. So, I mean, that's a big loss.

• 42:23Dan Snow?

  And they're not churning out carriers, are they?

• 42:25Speaker 03

  They're not churning, though the Americans, by the way, lose the equivalent of Midway in 42. They just lose it on four separate days. At the end of 1942, the Americans and the Japanese have lost the same number of carriers. The difference is the Japanese can't make the new ones. So what the Americans can do, particularly from 43 onwards, is just churn out these new class of aircraft carriers, and the Japanese can't keep pace. So the Americans can make up and exceed losses the Japanese can't. So even though the Japanese don't lose more than the Americans in 42, they can't make up the losses in nearly the same way.

• 43:00Dan Snow?

  Go listen to our leaders series. Join us after the break.

• 43:09Speaker 05

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• 43:40Speaker 01

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• 44:22Speaker 01

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• 44:38Dan Snow?

  And we should say the obvious, that this Japanese strategy of somehow persuading the Americans that it wasn't worth fighting, somehow making the war weary, disenchanted, giving up, that did not come to pass, did it? I mean, what was the effect of Pearl Harbor on the American public and political class?

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Yes, they did. They started the war in the one way that was going to be sure that the Americans were going to fight it through. That if you start a war with what the Americans will, you know, is a sneak attack. So they start dropping the bombs before they declare war. You have basically created in the United States an enemy that desperately wants revenge. And the American people were always harsher on Japan in the war than they were on the German population. They were more skeptical and more anti-Japanese than they were anti-German. And the United States military does certain things against Japan, such as the bombing of cities, which it was somewhat more divided upon with Germany. So I think what the Japanese have done is basically destroyed their whole strategy by starting the war in that way.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  And it's also a great trap for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes, is that you try to make your enemy what you want them to be as opposed to what they are. Hitler did the same. Oh, Americans are soft. They really won't stay with the war that long. They're far more interested in their pleasures. They're soft Democrats. But that was the Japanese view. It was just wrong.

• 46:01Dan Snow?

  Let's go forward now, Phil, to the summer of 1944. You've got a catastrophic naval battle in June 44, the Battle of Philippine Sea. You've got the Americans now with unbelievable weight of aircraft carriers, of embarked marine divisions, of amphibious capability. They're taking islands, they're attacking places like Saipan and Guam, Tinian. American long-range bombers are starting to strike at the Japanese homeland. Is this a decision point for Hirohito?

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it certainly does lead to some important political changes and shows what kind of war leader Hirohito is. On the one hand, he is hoping the summer of 44 ends up as another one of these decisive battles, in this case for Japan, that as the Americans come for what are called the Mariana Islands, and you can't understate the strategic importance of the Mariana Islands. They are most famously Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. They are so located that they are the only islands in the Pacific that can be reached at this point, from which the Americans can bomb Japan. So they are absolutely crucial Japanese islands. And the Americans are going for them. The Japanese know they're going to come for the Mariana Islands.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  And so the assumption is the Japanese will engage the Americans in a great battle, decisive battle, do a lot of damage, and this will be part of their defensive strategy.

• 47:23Dan Snow?

  And they'll sue for peace.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  And they'll sue for peace, or they will be so badly destroyed, they'll be kept at bay. Now it ends up being utterly different. And the Japanese are overwhelmed, not so much materially, but they're overwhelmed by things like pilot training and logistics. And the Americans can bring so much more to the table in full military systems. So that the Japanese lose 300 pilots and they shoot down just a handful of Americans, and that's a question of pilot training logistics as much as anything else. The Japanese have a lot of force in the Battle of Philippine Sea. And what happens after that is Hirohito was forced, on the one hand, to have Tojo go. That's the end of Tojo as prime minister, because they understand what the fall of

• 48:09Speaker 03

  the Marianas is going to bring, that the war, which had been kept from the Japanese people to that time, that there hadn't been any bombing of Japan. And by the way, they had also been lying, can I say their butts off? To the Japanese people about how well the war was going. I mean, the Japanese people must have been, fascinating thing, because they kept hearing another great victory from the Imperial Japanese Navy. We have sunk 12 American carriers and done this. And so they were only hearing stories of victory after victory after victory. And yet what interesting is all the victories were getting closer to Japan. So I wonder what, you know, how that's translating. But they can't hide the fact that they've lost the Marianas because they're about to be bombed. And that is why they were so desperate to hold it and to make this into the decisive battle.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  They have a real problem when the Mariana Islands fall, that the bombing is going to start with the development of the B-29. With the B-29, the very long-range bombers, is a real technological leap in aircraft production and allows bombing from the kind of distances that were inconceivable before the war. So two things happen. Hirohito basically has to cashier Tojo, and Tojo carries the blame for it, never Hirohito. Hirohito never carries the blame. The other thing is that Hirohito seems to be quite supportive of the move to suicide attacks. So the Japanese had been flirting with the idea of suicide attacks, the kamikaze, for a while, but they hadn't really done it in large numbers. They hadn't had a plan.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  But it is after the fall of the Mariana Islands that they really double down and think, okay, now's the time to go for the suicide operations. And Hirohito is not opposed. He's pretty supportive of the suicide operations, and that now becomes a part of Japanese war fighting strategy up until the end.

• 49:58Dan Snow?

  So Hirohito is very obviously plumping for suicidal resistance, last man, last bullet, every inch contested. Was there any alternative? Was there a political solution on the table at this point? Was there any sense of a negotiated out? Or did he now think the Americans had their blood up and would string them up from a lamppost?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Well, he's fighting for the preservation of the imperial system, at least within Japan, from this point. I think there is a realization that, oh, they're not going to end up with everything they had seized in 1942. That's out of the question. But they still believe a few things. One, they believe they can use the Soviet Union to help cut a deal. Hirohito personally, again, I think it's a sign perhaps how detached from reality they were, because during 42, 43, and 44, the Soviets and the Japanese were not at war with each other. They were neutral. They had a neutrality treaty. The Japanese think they can use the Soviet Union in some ways to broker a deal eventually with the Americans and the British.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  And the hope is that they can make the war so costly for the Americans and the British that ultimately they will accept some kind of deal that will allow Japan to remain as an independent power with the emperor, maybe with parts of Manchuria or some of the earlier empire there. So in their mind, they still have a strategy, perhaps not to win the war, but a strategy to maintain their rule. And that is what is happening after the Mariana Islands. And that's where suicide weapons are, one, they're effective. I mean, the suicide weapon is, for the Japanese, probably the most effective weapon they have to attack naval vessels. But also, they're trying to say to the Americans, look, this is what we will do.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  You're gonna have this more and more as you get closer to Japan, maybe you should make a deal with us.

• 51:48Dan Snow?

  And you mentioned getting close to Japan and learn or know that the defense of the home islands, of course, we're gonna need to remember, they had absolutely no idea about the atomic weapons program. Defense of the home islands, which is D-Day style attacks on the beach on the Japanese civilian population, will be met with astonishing levels of resistance, suicidal resistance.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  That's the plan. I mean, the plan is to make it so bloody for the Americans through the use of suicide weapons. By the way, at that point, we're talking about using civilians as well. Civilians were being told to strap bombs to themselves. And then, by the way, then the amount of suicide weapons by early 45 are very different than just the planes that we know about. There were suicide boats, there were suicide cars, your suicide vehicles. There were literally people who were told-

• 52:32Dan Snow?

  Swimming to strap-

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, strap bombs on yourself. It was supposed to engage on all levels, land, sea and air. And the plan, which Hirohito, he knew this was going on. He indeed speaks very respectfully of the kamikaze. He acknowledges their sacrifice and thinks it's a very profound thing for the state. And he would have been very happy to see millions of his citizens sacrifice themselves for his rule.

• 52:57Dan Snow?

  Phillips, there are few strategists who've ever dealt with what the Japanese, what Hirohito dealt with in just a couple of days in August 1945. The Japanese homeland struck with not one, but two atomic weapons, weapons of hitherto unimaginable power.

• 53:16Dan Snow?

  And the Soviet Army, the biggest, most astonishing veteran-filled force in Eurasia at the time, launches an overwhelming attack on Japanese possessions in northern China. How did he even go about trying to solve this?

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Well, there Hirohito actually does understand the war's over. And they really get down to one point, is that to protect the emperor's rule. The atomic bomb is dropped August 6th. By August 10th, you've had another atomic bomb and the Soviets enter the war. On August 10th, Hirohito has decided that Japan has to get out of the war. So the hammer blows have finally got their message in. What they want, however, is any guarantee, even the flimsiest sign that they can get that the Americans might not get rid of the imperial system. And they believe in sort of diplomatic exchanges, they're getting some assurance, there's a

• 54:13Speaker 03

  chance that Hirohito's position will be protected, or at least that he's not automatically out. And for Hirohito, that's enough. He does actually, at that point, want the war to end, more because it's probably the only chance he has of protecting his rule. He makes that calculation.

• 54:30Dan Snow?

  And it is pretty well attested on this occasion that he is the one who decisively intervenes as, it's over, boys.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yep. I mean, he does decide on August 10th, from what we can tell. There had been a growing peace lobby in the government, so it's not like he creates this. Before that, he had been siding a lot with the hardliners. Hirohito's method from 41 onwards had been to side with the more aggressive, the hardline faction. On August 10th, he moves decisively to side for the peace faction. And that is important because once it comes out that the emperor is opting to end the war, the extremists in the army, in some ways, lose heart, and the hardliners realize the game is up. So that the army, which would have had a faction that would have kept fighting, atomic bomb or otherwise, they would have kept fighting until they themselves were

• 55:20Speaker 03

  killed, do agree that they will accept the fact the emperor has admitted the war's over.

• 55:25Dan Snow?

  It's interesting that we talk about Hirohito as a poor strategist, and he obviously was, but it's a reminder that as long as you get the last call right, sometimes that might be enough to save you. He made every single wrong call during the war, but he got the last call right.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Well, he is the most successful Axis leader, because he dies in his bed in the 1980s as the emperor of one of the richest countries in the world. Japan is actually booming by the 1980s when he dies. And he ends up being a revered figure, a very popular figure in Japan. And what he does, and what you might say the Japanese establishment does around him, is start protecting his reputation and position with great skill from the moment the war ends. I mean, it's extraordinary that everybody who talks about the war, when they go back, they would say, oh, the emperor really didn't want war. Emperor believed in... It's not true at all, none of it is.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  But it was almost like everyone had a hymn sheet, and they all sang from the same hymn sheet, which was to exonerate Hirohito and Hirohito's role in the war. And in many ways, the Americans go along with that, because someone like MacArthur believes a constitutional monarch is actually an important way to maintain stability in Japan. And in fact, what MacArthur believes is if the emperor shows that the emperor supports the new American rule, that will make the new American rule successful, and Hirohito's happy to go along with that. So Hirohito adjusts from being the great opponent of America to be an enabler of American rule, and from that, he ends up actually having a nice, long life.

• 57:04Dan Snow?

  Philip, I've never thought about this before, but it's the hottest of hot takes. Hitler and Mussolini die murdered or by their own hand as their countryline ruins all of their dreams up in smoke. Churchill dies feeling disappointed, the British Empire no longer exists, he hasn't achieved his aim. Hirohito, hot take, one of the most successful strategist of World War II leaders.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  Maintains his position and ends up his life doing what he wants and studying insects and being happy as can be.

• 57:31Dan Snow?

  So Japan prosperous.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Japan prosperous.

• 57:34Dan Snow?

  Revere it around the world.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  And his reputation intact when he dies. Now, his reputation has been challenged since he has died quite aggressively, but by the time he dies, he's probably thinking, everyone loves me.

• 57:47Dan Snow?

  It's fascinating to consider how things might have looked different after the war. Had Hirohito been arrested, tried, perhaps even executed, would Japan have risen up against American occupation? Would there have been a coup or have swung the other way? Would it have seen an upsurge in communist feeling? There's a really difficult moral dilemma here. Monstrous crimes were carried out in Hirohito's name. He knew about them. In a perfect world, he should have faced justice. And yet, perhaps smoothed by his continued rule, Japan became one of the world's leading democracies, an engine of prosperity, of innovation, of arts, of culture.

• 58:29Dan Snow?

  But then perhaps maybe that happened despite Hirohito's continued presence on the throne.

• 58:35Dan Snow?

  We will never know.

• 58:42Dan Snow?

  Thank you to both Dr Chris Harding and Philip O'Brien, whose new book, The Strategist, was the inspiration for this series. Join me next time for the last episode in our Leaders series, where we'll be examining the importance of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Could America have so decisively intervened in the war if it hadn't been for his leadership? To get the next episode, hit Follow in your Podcast Player, it'll drop into your libraries by magic. See you next time.

• 59:35Speaker 01

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• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Outdated technology isn't going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we wake up every day and work for better. We call it healthy optimism. It's how we use insights and technology to help providers focus less on paperwork and more on patients. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 1:00:56Dan Snow?

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