I don't know much about the emperor, except that he gotWill O'B wrote:Innocent Bystander wrote:
I know the idea of surrender was the Emperor's. Several higher-up military leaders opposed it at first to the point of trying to sabotage it. I still wonder why the Emperor would not have held onto what he was surely taught about death being more honorable than defeat. What was it that was stronger than this ideal and which ultimately led him to unconditionally surrender his country to a race that the Japanese considered their inferiors?
on the radio and told the people that he wasn't a god,
just a man.
I would suppose that, seeing defeat was inevitable and
that Japan was about to be blown off the face of the
earth, he felt a responsibility to his people to end
the war. He saw himself not as a soldier in combat
but as ruler who had a duty to save his
people.
And nobody was in a position to order him
to go on fighting.