"The Emperor's Speech: 67 Years Ago, Hirohito Transformed Japan
Forever" August 15th, 2012 On this day in 1945, one week after
atomic bombs had obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and then
Nagasaki, radios across Japan crackled with another shocking
announcement, one that would come to change the course of
Japanese history perhaps as much as did the atomic bombs Little
Boy and Fat Man. At noon, Emperor Hirohito spoke directly to his
subjects for the first time in his reign. His announcement would
shock Japan, but it would also transform it, altering in a few
short minutes the entire mission of the Japanese nation in ways
that it, and the world, still feel today. Hirohito was more than
Japan's head of state. He was its divine monarch and the
personification of both the nation and its spiritual imperative
for imperial expansion, "the literally living embodiment of
Japan past and present, a paradigm of moral excellence,"
according to Herbert Bix's Pulitzer-winning biography. Hirohito
both embodied and galvanized