Prisoner Quotes
It was never submitted as evidence in any proceeding or made a part of the U. S. investigatory record of war crimes of World War II. Nor was it ever found in Japan in the official records. The only copy was found in 2003 at the home of Bonner F. Fellers one of MacArthur’s top aids in the Japanese Occupation. Fellers and McArthur advocated not further investigating or trying the Japanese Emperor either because they, believed he was not guilty or because they thought his trial would be too disruptive to the occupation. The authenticity of this monologue has not been verified. Apologists for the Emperor argue that it shows that he was a virtual prisoner of the militarists and unable to stop the war or any of the war crimes; others argue that the Japanese military would never have gone against the will of the Emperor and that this document was probably prepared with the coaching of General Fellers as ex post facto “evidence” of the Emperor’s innocence. See {643148} and {601309} for examples of Fellers manipulating the “evidence.”
He was trying to immigrate illegally to a number of countries and tried Beersheba in Israel which is in the desert—a climate with which he was familiar. With the Arab Israeli conflict ongoing, it is rare to get a description of the Israeli jails from someone who is not a party to the conflict.
