Judging by the rape of Nanking and the appaling treatment of POWs in WW2,should Hirohito have been charged with war crimes?
It seems the military nearly had him hostage, and we’ll never know the full story of his complicity.
Nevertheless, we had to let him off.
I believe that preserving him and his status was directly responsible for the peaceful cooperative transition that ensued.
Had we tried, or strung him up, chaos would have been the order of the day.
Some genuine criminals got away clean, though. The bunch doing human medical experiments in Manchuria, for example.
MacArthur got himself some pretty good deals as well.
No, because he had just a simbolic power
That is not quite as accurate as you might imagine.
That “symbolism” carried a lot of weight.
His complicity, cooperation, or at least lack of opposition allowwed the military to plow ahead with their agenda.
It was also very effective in maintaining order and pacifying post war Japan.
But Japan was ruled by the military leaders, if the Emperor had tried something, the military leaders could have take him out of the “power”, assassinated him,etc. I agree with you that he was very efective in the post-war japan, and that the people liked him, but he was just a puppet, and Tojo could have easily implanted a dictatorship, even if the japanese disliked it.