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Back to the story of right after the end of Pacific War, there is a famous photo of the Supreme commander, Douglas MacArthur getting off the airplane after landing at Atsugi Base, Kanagawa, Japan, on August 30^th, 1945, with no weapon on him. He wrote a memoir called “Reminiscences,” about his experience during the Pacific War. As Supreme Commander of GHQ, he wrote of his experiences in his lifetime in this memoir.

Douglas MacArthur trusted what the advisors of the Intelligence Agency provided. Even though his staff generals called his way of arrival on the land a gamble, his plane landed on Atsugi Base with a handful of staff in the midst of well-armed Japanese troops on August 30^th. According to his autobiography, Reminiscences, “Years of overseas duty had schooled me well in the lessons of the Orient and, what probably more important, had taught the Far East that I was its friend.” He really was a broad-minded man.

The Supreme Commander, MacArthur and GHQ’s understanding of the main role of the Emperor was that the Emperor’s existence was the crucial factor that the United States could use to avoid internal political conflicts and meaningless battles after the Pacific War in Japan. At the same time, he had a clear intention to unify Japan making use of the existence of the Emperor as the symbol of unity, as is the case of the role of the President of the United States and made sure Tenno had no ruling authority of politics.

In spite of this fact, many Japanese journalists and researchers never point this out even now and continue writing books and journals that GHQ “occupied” and “changed” Japan. The journalists and educators have manipulated the facts and made up various stories. Teachers at school repeat the stories in the classrooms that GHQ occupied and changed Japan. They try to create an image that Douglas MacArthur was a dictator and destroyed the Japanese identity and culture.

Anyhow, the articles written by major Japanese media, such as the Asahi Newspaper (Asahi Shinbun) in those days were far more evil than you could imagine. For example, MacArthur was appalled at the article stating that the responsibility of the Pacific War was on all the Japanese public. He started censorship against media.