---
title: "Hirohito"
chunk: 5/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Of course His Majesty is a pacifist, and there is no doubt he wished to avoid war. When I told him that to initiate war was a mistake, he agreed. But the next day, he would tell me: "You were worried about it yesterday, but you do not have to worry so much." Thus, gradually, he began to lean toward war. And the next time I met him, he leaned even more toward. In short, I felt the Emperor was telling me: my prime minister does not understand military matters, I know much more. In short, the Emperor had absorbed the view of the army and navy high commands.
The army and the navy recommended the appointment of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, one of Hirohito's uncles, as prime minister. According to the Shōwa "Monologue", written after the war, Hirohito then said that if the war were to begin while a member of the imperial house was prime minister, the imperial house would have to carry the responsibility and he was opposed to this. Instead, Hirohito chose the hard-line General Hideki Tōjō, who was known for his devotion to the imperial institution, and asked him to make a policy review of what had been sanctioned by the Imperial Conferences.

On 2 November Tōjō, Sugiyama, and Nagano reported to Hirohito that the review of eleven points had been in vain. Emperor Hirohito gave his consent to the war and then asked: "Are you going to provide justification for the war?" The decision for war against the United States was presented for approval to Hirohito by General Tōjō, Naval Minister Admiral Shigetarō Shimada, and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō.
On 3 November, Nagano explained in detail the plan of the attack on Pearl Harbor to Hirohito. On 5 November Emperor Hirohito approved in imperial conference the operations plan for a war against the Western world and had many meetings with the military and Tōjō until the end of the month. He initially showed hesitance towards engaging in war, but eventually approved the decision to strike Pearl Harbor despite opposition from certain advisors. In the period leading up to Pearl Harbor, he expanded his control over military matters and participated in the Conference of Military Councillors, which was considered unusual of him. Additionally, he sought additional information regarding the attack plans. An aide reported that he openly showed joy upon learning of the success of the surprise attacks.
On 25 November, Henry L. Stimson, the United States Secretary of War, noted in his diary that he had discussed with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt the severe likelihood that Japan was about to launch a surprise attack and that the question had been "how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
On the following day, 26 November 1941, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with the Hull note, which as one of its conditions demanded the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from French Indochina and China. Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo said to his cabinet, "This is an ultimatum." On 1 December, an Imperial Conference sanctioned the "War against the United States, United Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Netherlands."

==== War: advance and retreat ====
On 8 December (7 December in Hawaii), 1941, Japanese forces launched the Pacific War with a series of simultaneous surprise attacks. U.S. territories were targeted during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the invasion of Batan Island and aerial attack on Clark Field in the Commonwealth of the Philippines. British Empire territories were attacked in the Battle of Hong Kong and the invasion of Malaya.
With the nation fully committed to the war, Hirohito took a keen interest in military progress and sought to boost morale. According to Akira Yamada and Akira Fujiwara, Hirohito made major interventions in some military operations. For example, he pressed Sugiyama four times, on 13 and 21 January and 9 and 26 February, to increase troop strength and launch an attack on Bataan. On 9 February, 19 March, and 29 May, Hirohito ordered the Army Chief of staff to examine the possibilities for an attack on Chongqing in China, which led to Operation Gogo.
While some authors, like journalists Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, say that throughout the war, Hirohito was "outraged" at Japanese war crimes and the political dysfunction of many societal institutions that proclaimed their loyalty to him, and sometimes spoke up against them, others, such as historians Herbert P. Bix and Mark Felton, as well as the expert on China's international relations Michael Tai, point out that Hirohito personally sanctioned the "Three Alls policy" (Sankō Sakusen), a scorched earth strategy implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and which was both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians.
As the tide of war began to turn against Japan (around late 1942 and early 1943), the flow of information to the palace gradually began to bear less and less relation to reality, while others suggest that Hirohito worked closely with Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, continued to be well and accurately briefed by the military, and knew Japan's military position precisely right up to the point of surrender. The chief of staff of the General Affairs section of the Prime Minister's office, Shuichi Inada, remarked to Tōjō's private secretary, Sadao Akamatsu: