AP News, March 9th, 2007
Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Emperor Hirohito told aides he hoped to visit the South Pacific after the war, when the entire region would be Japanese territory, according to a newly released journal. He also said, however, he did not want Japan to go to war with China.
Hirohito made the South Seas comment on Christmas Day 1941 _ just weeks after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Pacific War, according to the journal kept by his chamberlain. Excerpts of the journal were published in the monthly Bungeishunju magazine on Saturday.
An advance copy was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
"I'd like to see the South Sea after peace is restored," Hirohito was quoted as saying. "It won't be a problem because the area will be part of Japan's territory."
According to Bungeishunju, the 600-page journal was kept by Hirohito's main aide, Kuraji Ogura, and covered the period from May 1939 to June 1945.
The magazine has not commented on how it obtained Ogura's journal.
Hirohito's observations were often less sanguine.
In October 1940, he seemed angry over the situation on the Chinese front, saying Japan had underestimated China's strength. "I did not want to see this war with China begin," he said.
"China is stronger than expected. Everybody made mistakes in war projections," he said.
He was also quoted as warning that Japan must be cautious in entering into war but that once a war had begun, Japan "must fight it to the end."
On Sept. 2, 1945, almost a month after atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hirohito told the nation on the radio for the first time that it was time to "bear the unbearable" and accept an unconditional surrender.
Across America, Europe and the Pacific, troops girding for an invasion of Japan cheered and wept for joy.
Hirohito died in 1989. His reign continues to be a sensitive subject in Japan.
Last year, the Bungeishunju magazine set off a political tempest by publishing private memorandums that suggested Hirohito was deeply upset over the decision to honor war criminals at a Tokyo war shrine.
Hirohito stopped visiting the Yasukuni shrine out of displeasure over its 1978 decision to begin honoring convicted war criminals.
The inclusion of war criminals among the millions of war dead honored at the shrine also outraged many across Asia, especially in China and the Koreas, and visits there by Japanese leaders still provoke angry reactions around the region.
