The most striking aspect of the film, apart from its eerie floating brains, however, was its fundamentally optimistic message. Neither blood, culture, nor history drove the Japanese to war, but rather socialization and indoctrination of recent vintage. When all was said and done, reeducation did not in fact seem to be such an insuperable task. The title of an article in the weekly Saturday Evening Post four months after surrender captured the new outlook succinctly: “The G.I. Is Civilizing the Jap.”20
