Smartest thing we did we keeping the Emperor after the war. Probably saved Japan from going Communist.
Yep. MacArthur was no dummy.
What should have happened is what usually happened when Japan suffered some tragic situation: the Emperor would abdicate, and his son, usually not grown, would take the throne, with the Joukou (retired Emperor) making decisions from behind the curtain.
Hirohito would have abdicated, with his son Akihito, who was 12, becoming the Emperor. That would have continued the Imperial system, with some sense of the wartime Emperor losing something as a result of the years of aggression and atrocities. There would have been in practicality, however, no change in how Japan revived from the war into a peaceful and prosperous nation and ally of ours.
(P.S. Akihito is still with us at 92 as a Joukou, and his son Narihito is the present Emperor. Naruhito's daughter, Princess Kako, is the Japanese equivalent of the Dutch princess Catharina-Amalia, or vice versa.)
"We" didn't do it. Mac did.
The Allies wanted rid of the Emperor, and that was the mindset going into Potsdam. Through back channels, the Japanese let the Allies know that they could not and would not under any circumstances yield on the matter of the sovereignty of the Emperor, meaning the original draft of the Potsdam Declaration was a non-starter.
Truman's exact words to Mac were, “You will exercise your authority as you deem proper ... your authority is supreme.”
The final paragraph of the surrender instrument reads, "The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate these terms of surrender."
They kicked the can down the road and left EVERYTHING to MacArthur's discretion.
"We" didn't have squat to do with it. If Mac had wanted the Emperor strung up by his short and curlies, that's what would have happened. Mac's respect for the Japanese people and understanding of their culture was all that saved their bacon from what otherwise probably would have been a diasterous rebuilding.