An Analysis of the Truth Box: Focusing on How the Radio inOccupied Japan Established a Relationship Between the Emperorand the Japanese Public

Abstract

　This paper examines the Truth Box, a radio program broadcast under the

General Headquarters of the Allied Forces（ GHQ） in Occupied Japan. The Civil

Information and Education Section （CIE）, a special staff section of GHQ,

directed and produced the program, answering letters from listeners about

their questions on the Asia-Pacific War. The author’s main aim is to reveal how

the program conveyed the Emperor’s war responsibility, while establishing a

new relationship between the Emperor and the Japanese public. Drawing on an

analytic framework called Critical Discourse Studies, which allows us to explore

a media discourse within its sociohistorical contexts, the present study provides

some previously-unpublished scripts of the program and analyzes them with

reference to related historical primary sources. The author concludes that the

Truth Box, which premiered after the Humanity Declaration and continued to

air in parallel with the opening of the International Military Tribunal for the

Far East, clearly reflects the political intention of GHQ and the CIE to exempt

the Emperor from any culpability by orienting the Japanese public to reflect on

their own war guilt.