Residing on our East Coast, is a respected and now retired psychiatrist, Dr. Murray Glusman. At the outset of World War II, he was captured with other military personnel in the Philippines, on Corregidor, when it capitulated, in May 1942, and survived being a prisoner of war of the Japanese for almost four years. His personal experiences, in addition to his considerable research, have made him a qualified authority on the harsh Japanese treatment of their prisoners of war.

Dr. Glusman usually speaks briefly about the first victory by Nippon as the surprise and unprovoked attack on the Hawaiian Islands in general and Pearl Harbor in particular. This treacherous assault against the United States, a country with which she was at peace, was a very successful attack which devastated our Navy's battleship fleet, crippled our air defenses in the Territory of Hawaii, and killed over three thousand American service men and civilians. Almost twelve hundred perished on the U.S.S. Arizona, bombed along "battleship row" early on the Sunday morning of December 7, 1941.

The second major military victory was the triumphant campaign in the Southwest Pacific from the commencing of hostilities through the first one half of 1942. This resulted in the surrender of Singapore, Hong Kong, Malay, Siam, the Dutch East Indies, and of course, the entire Philippine Islands, with the fall of Manila, Bataan and Corregidor.

The third great victory by Japan was not a military victory at all, but a significant public relations victory.  How else can one explain that after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan proceeded to transform herself from a monstrous aggressor into a helpless and pitiful victim. From the time in 1910 when Japan annexed all of Korea up to and including the time of the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in 1942, the nation of Japan conducted herself in the savage, ruthless manner of an aggressor, whose conquests were marked by a barbarousness and ferocity unmatched in modern times. (Recall much of Japan's notorious conduct predated Hitler and Stalin.)

Most historians estimate that the Japanese slaughtered over thirty million Chinese, mostly civilians. During the so-called "Rape of Nanking." Over two hundred fifty thousand civilians: Chinese, Koreans and Filipino women were forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women" for Japanese troops all across Southeast Asia.

Historians further estimate that, in the building of the Burma-Siam railroad, twenty percent of the approximately 61,000 prisoners of war and almost fifty percent of the 250,000 Asians forced into slave labor, died or were killed. The Japanese beheaded downed American pilots and crewmen and other prisoners of war. In the infamous "Bataan Death March" the Japanese shot, bayoneted or beheaded American and Filipino prisoners of war for failing to keep up with the march or for falling out of line for a drink of water. The Japanese burned American prisoners of war on the island of Palawan and also massacred some of the prisoners of war.  Most historians estimate that the Japanese slaughtered over thirty thousand Chinese, mostly civilians on Wake, Nauru and Balale.

But unlike Germany, which has fully accepted responsibility and guilt for her crimes and atrocities in World War II Japan has consistently minimized, denied and ignored the inhuman atrocities she has committed. Also Japan has consistently refused to accept responsibility for starting the war in the Pacific. Instead, Japan fosters the image as a victim. Japan annually commemorates the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and identifies herself with images of the pitifully burned and disfigured victims. (Japan also ignores the fact that the fire bombing of Tokyo and Nagoya in March and April 1945, by our American B-29 bombers each killed more than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined. Along with this, Japan refused to consider all opportunities to surrender before Hiroshima was bombed.)

The public relations campaign by Japan to transform her image from aggressor to victim has been so successful that she has managed to shift guilt for World War II to the Americans dropping the bombs. With each anniversary of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the termination of the war in the Pacific, editorialists and letter writers, born one or two generations after World War II and with little or no awareness of the context in which the atomic bombs were dropped, seek to expiate their guilt for Hiroshima and Nagasaki by bemoaning the bombing that brought that war to an abrupt and blessed end.

Many respected historians confirm all this, and within the last few years, even more knowledgeable historians are focusing on Japan's atrocity mentality. Two recent noteworthy books on the inhuman treatment of Japan's prisoners of war and civilians are well documented in the landmark book by Yuki Tanaka entitled "Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War It," and Bernard Edwards' book entitled "Blood and Bushido: Japanese Atrocities at Sea, 1941-1945."

One might also correctly report that the so called "Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere" adopted by Japan as a national policy early in the 20th Century to assure Japan as the only controller of the entire western Pacific rim, has never been repudiated. It is still Japan's long term goal.