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Popes, Bishops and War Criminals: reflections on Catholics and Yasukuni in post-war Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

John Breen
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In November 1945, General McArthur invited two Catholic priests to GHQ to sound them out on a proposal he was poised to implement, namely the razing of Yasukuni, the Tokyo shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead. The priests were Bruno Bitter, SJ, head of Sophia University, and Patrick Byrne, Maryknoll. Both men quickly declared their opposition. It was, they insisted, the right and duty of citizens everywhere to honour their war dead; Yasukuni was, moreover, a national monument to the war dead, which honoured men and women of all faiths equally, and not merely a Shinto shrine; finally, GHQ's plans to destroy Yasukuni would be so damaging as to imperil the entire Occupation endeavour. McArthur was persuaded by these arguments, and Yasukuni was spared. Yasukuni owes its survival, then, in post war Japan to the intercession of two Catholic priests. While this author has found no independent evidence to corroborate this intriguing story, Fr Shimura Tatsuya recounts it in his book Kyōkai hiwa, and he for one is persuaded.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 9 , March 2010 , e3
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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