Author Of Japan Occupation History Warns "Iraq is not Japan"

''Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' reportedly is required reading in the Bush White House.

There is a famous temple called Kiyomizu-dera on a steep hillside in Kyoto, and on the eve of Pearl Harbor Tojo realized that he had gotten himself into a terrible predicament, and he said, ''Well, sometimes you just have to close your eyes and leap off the veranda at Kiyomizu-dera.'' Why did he have to take the plunge then? Because the weather was going to be bad in Southeast Asia, the troops had already been mobilized and he had pumped up his rhetoric.