[Nachoman]

Its hard to get inside MacArthur's head on why the emperor avoided the noose.

Its not really hard at all. The Emperor agreed to convince the populace to submit to the surrender and the occupation. If he had been executed, he would have been elevated to martyr, and we would still be fighting Japs today.

[freerepublic_or_die]

I had always felt extremely resentful, cheated that the Emperor never got his deserved comeuppance. But after watching a History Channel documentary on this recently, expressing the exact same sentiments you just did, I came to terms with what was in the final analysis the only way the Americans could have secured the peace they did, that not even untold atom bombs would have made possible.