Director Peter Webber's new film Emperor focuses on a less explored side of the Second World War: U.S.-Japan relations after Japan's surrender, specifically the dilemma of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the man in charge of the occupation. Should Emperor Hirohito remain on the throne or be tried for war crimes and possibly executed? The problem was how to maintain stability in a devastated Japan while defusing heated anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States.
Released in theaters in March, Emperor features Tommy Lee Jones as MacArthur, but the story centers on the aide who led him to pardon Hirohito, Gen. Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox of ABC's Lost). Compared to MacArthur, Fellers is little known. But the archives of Stanford's Hoover Institution shed light on the man, housing 59 boxes of his papers, including speeches and writings, reports, correspondence and military orders, many issued by Fellers himself. Hoover acquired the majority of the collection in 1970, three years before Fellers's death. Years later, his family donated his remaining correspondence.
Born in 1896 in Ridge Farm, Ill., Fellers graduated from West Point in 1918, joined the U.S. Army and advanced to the rank of brigadier general by 1942. His active duty took him from the Philippines to Egypt and Africa in addition to his service in Japan. After the war, he became active in the Republican National Committee and Citizens Foreign Aid Committee. In his 1953 book Wings for Peace: A Primer for a New Defense, Fellers argued that air power, not containment or surface capabilities, was the superior strategy against the Soviet Union. He joined the John Birch Society and actively promoted Barry Goldwater for president during the 1964 campaign.
The Fellers papers reveal a man shrewd in applying cultural psychology and strategy to an escalating political situation. Hoover archivist Carol Leadenham stresses the importance of concurrent world events in Fellers's recommendation that MacArthur leave the Emperor in place. "After the war was over, everybody was worried about the Soviet Union, and the thing to do was get Japan back on its feet as rapidly as possible," she says. "And you don't do that by putting the Emperor on trial and hanging him for war crimes."
One piece of memorabilia in particular underscores the political and emotional stakes at hand in Webber's film. Fellers's October 1945 memo to MacArthur, which the film quotes directly, lays out a multifaceted argument for keeping Emperor Hirohito on the throne. To try him as a war criminal, Fellers warned, would be a breach of faith that "would not only be blasphemous but a denial of spiritual freedom." The Emperor, whom the Japanese view as the divine head of state, had helped end the war by ordering seven million soldiers to lay down their arms, and Japan's unconditional surrender rested upon preserving the existing structure of the state. Although the Japanese would "uncomplainingly stand any other humiliation," Fellers wrote, if the United States places the Emperor on trial millions of citizens would be alienated. In his words, "the governmental structure would collapse and a general uprising would be inevitable."
The Hoover papers illuminate how Fellers's instincts derived from his deep understanding and interpretation of Japanese culture. During the war, Fellers served as head of the United States' psychological warfare drive against Japanese combat troops. His operation sought "to weaken the enemy will to resist" by disseminating highly strategized propaganda aimed at spreading disunity and creating doubt in the minds of Japanese soldiers and civilians as to their nation's invincibility. "Effective Psychological Warfare requires comprehensive grasp of the temper and psychological traits of the peoples against whom the program is directed," Fellers wrote in 1946.
Even in July 1944, more than a year before the end of the war, Fellers acknowledged the inevitable complexities of American relations with the Japanese Emperor. "As Emperor and acknowledged head of the state, Hirohito cannot side step war guilt," he wrote in a report on Japanese psychology. Later in the same report he mused, "There must be no weakness in the peace terms. However . . . hanging of the Emperor to them would be comparable to the crucifixion of Christ to us. . . . The war would be unduly prolonged; our losses heavier than otherwise would be necessary."
In his papers one senses Fellers's willingness to face complex truths but detects a steady thread of optimism even during wartime. He described in warm terms his first firm handshake with Emperor Hirohito after the war, and elsewhere contemplated how to turn the Japanese state into "a force for good and peace." His October 1945 memo to MacArthur concluded: "American long range interests require friendly relations with the Orient based on mutual respect, faith and understanding." Sixty-eight years later, if the film Emperor is any indicator, America's alliance with Japan has indeed reached a point of open dialogue about intercultural understanding, even when the conversation delves back into the more fraught periods of the past.
Rachel Kolb, '12, is a graduate student in English from Albuquerque, N.M., and a Stanford intern.
