What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story, first broadcast on April 23, 1944, follows Carlton, a reporter, as he interviews Tyler McWade, a repatriate who spent twenty-three years in Japan and was taken prisoner when war was declared. Carlton asks McWade about the Japanese attitude toward their emperor, and McWade explains the mythology behind it: the creation of Japan, the descent of the imperial line from the sun goddess Amaterasu, and the state Shinto beliefs surrounding the war dead. The conversation traces how the emperor's authority was shaped over centuries, from the shogun era through the Meiji restoration to the military's growing power in the 1930s. McWade describes the Yasukuni Shrine, a children's festival, and the emperor's visit to the shrine of the sun goddess during the war. The episode ends mid-discussion, as Carlton raises the question of the emperor's real power.
A boat carrying repatriates returning from Japan, and later Tokyo and Japan's imperial history as recounted by McWade
Characters: Carlton, Tyler McWade, Commodore Perry, Emperor Hirohito
Listen for: McWade's explanation of the Japanese myth of the emperor's divine descent and how it shapes Japanese attitudes toward the state and war
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.