As for allowing an Allied occupation force on Japanese soil without a fight, any Japanese leader who proposed such a disgraceful idea was asking for a bullet between the eyes. Even now, in the summer of 1945, the men who ruled Japan were slow to recognize that they could not simply turn the hands of the clock back to 1941, or 1937, or 1931, or even 1905. They wanted peace, but they could not yet face up to the stark reality of their total defeat.
