How business, doctors and journalists prey on your food anxieties I

_
World War II
Humiliafion
Forthese U .S .
soldiers captured
in the Philip•
pines in 1942, sur,
render was just
the beginning of
the price they
paid for U .S. un•
preparedness .
No more war
"The Yanks are
not coming"
expressed the
overwhelming sentiment
in the U.S .
at the beginning
of WWII . But it
takes two to keep
the peace .
historic achievement that sa~ed cisilization
in thc ~corld, <strong>and</strong> is more
intent on denigrating the Wcst in
general <strong>and</strong> the United States in
particular . Svmbolic of this mindset
Ila%c been tlle annual pilgrimages to
Hiroshima <strong>and</strong> Nagasaki to denounce
the dropping of atomic
bombs on those cttles .
The recisionist line is tllat Japan svas
"Yeadv to surrender" am-svav <strong>and</strong> that
the bombs were dropped for mere
vengeance, or because the Japanesc
s~ere of another race, or for aN arten, of
other dishonorable reasons . Wlrat
matters is Mhether Japan was prepared
to make peace in 1945 on the terms
being odered, Nrhich ~~cre "unconditional
surrender ." Those terms-or
something close to them, since the
.Allies did relent to the extent ofallowing
the emperor to remain titular head
of sratc-Ncere essential to the historic
transformation of Japan that has kept
it a peaceful nation tbr halfa centurv,
despire its manv wars of aggression
against Aussia, Korea, Manchuria,
C :hina, tlle United States <strong>and</strong> Southeasr
Asian nations in the preceding
halFtentun .
As in Ciermane, the \trestcrn dcmoa-::cies
rid themselces of ;t historic
nnd d :tngcrous cnemy in Japan in the
The a s A'OT._:Coroin~. .
best wav possi ble-b~• tunling it into a
democratic <strong>and</strong> peaceful nation . This
enormous achicrement, for the West
<strong>and</strong> for the ~eorld, depended on occupation
<strong>and</strong> connrol of a~cholc societv,
notsinlplv its militarVcapituiation . In
short, the question is not whether
Japan sras "rcad%" to make peace
beture the atomic bomhs ssere
dropped, as rerisionist historians
daim, but ~ehedler du Japanese govcrnment
was prepared to make peace
11RVOU!vi~:~:~
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under the terms oflered-which is to
say, the terms that made a lasting
peace possible .
With the fiftieth anni of
the end of World War II being
celebrated this month, ~~c must also
recognize that this ~.~ar became nco
essan- ouly becausc the democratic
nations left thenlschcs dangerousle
vulnerable . The cost of such \~ulncrabifiny
is, of course, e%en greater in
a nuclear age . IIIIIIIII
128 Forbcs ∎ August 14, 1995
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/agf97d00/pdf