(2 of 2)
On Aug. 10, 1945, the day after Atomic Bomb No. 2 struck Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito stepped down from the clouds at another imperial conference, and for the first time in his career dictated a major decision: to accept the Allies' terms of unconditional surrender.
A few weeks later, General MacArthur was facing the Japanese surrender delegation (including Author Kase) on the Missouri. His speech calling for a world dedicated to "freedom, tolerance and justice" left Kase "thrilled beyond words, spellbound, thunderstruck. For the living heroes and dead martyrs of the war this speech was a wreath of undying flowers."
In Author Kase's report on the ceremony for the Emperor, he "raised the question whether it would have been possible for us, had we been victorious, to embrace the vanquished with a similar magnanimity. Clearly, it would have been different ... Indeed, an incalculable ideological distance separates America from Japan. After all, we were not beaten on the battlefields by dint of superior arms. We were defeated by a nobler ideal."