Ned Hardy

Japanese listening to the recorded radio broadcast of Emperor Hirohito announcing the surrender of Japan, August 1945

They had never heard his voice.

Think about that. An emperor—descended, according to tradition, from the sun itself—existed more as a mythic construct than a human figure. And suddenly, on an August day when the world seemed to be cracking open at the seams, his voice came through tinny speakers and battered radios, distorted by static and ceremonial language so archaic that even many native Japanese struggled to parse it.

[Read more…] about 5 Historical Photos That Speak Volumes