In a way the world owes Japan a dept of gratitude, because President Roosevelt was not yet committed to ACTIVELY supporting Europe's fight against Nazi Germany.
The Japanese were not the real enemy .. until they attacked America.
History has shown that America is reluctant to go to war, but unrelenting in staying power, once provoked.
(Well, except perhaps for the past decade ... but that's a history still in the making. As Dr. Martin Luther King implied, our leadership should be judged by the content of his character.)
My uncle was killed in Germany; he was a sergeant in that war. I was born on the day when the U.S. Flag was flown on Mount Suribachi, on Iwo Jima.
Two memorable photos commemorate both the battle of Iwo Jima .....
... and Victory over Japan Day.
(My Son, "The Squid Kid", actually has a reproduction of this photograph hanging on the wall of his family quarters at Whidby Island NAS.)
The Japanese emperor speaks — History.com This Day in History — 8/15/1945:
On this day in 1945, Emperor Hirohito broadcasts the news of Japan's surrender to the Japanese people. Although Tokyo had already communicated to the Allies its acceptance of the surrender terms of the Potsdam Conference several days earlier, and a Japanese news service announcement had been made to that effect, the Japanese people were still waiting to hear an authoritative voice speak the unspeakable: that Japan had been defeated. That voice was the emperor's. In Japan's Shinto religious tradition, the emperor was also divine; his voice was the voice of a god. And on August 15, that voice—heard over the radio airwaves for the very first time—confessed that Japan's enemy "has begun to employ a most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives." This was the reason given for Japan's surrender. Hirohito's oral memoirs, published and translated after the war, evidence the emperor's fear at the time that "the Japanese race will be destroyed if the war continues." A sticking point in the Japanese surrender terms had been Hirohito's status as emperor. Tokyo wanted the emperor's status protected; the Allies wanted no preconditions. There was a compromise. The emperor retained his title; Gen. Douglas MacArthur believed his at least ceremonial presence would be a stabilizing influence in postwar Japan. But Hirohito was forced to disclaim his divine status. Japan lost more than a war—it lost a god.
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