The Moral Vision
The Japanese Experience
~ 181 ~
punishment meted out to the Japanese during the
Second World War.
When Mr. Khushwant Singh visited Japan, he
learnt, much to his astonishment, that the Japanese
do not exploit the events of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, in order to discredit the U.S.A. It is other
nations, on the contrary, who have exploited these
events for this purpose. When Khushwant Singh
asked the reason for this attitude, a Japanese replied
in a surprisingly calm tone:
“We hit them first at Pearl Harbour. We killed a lot
of them. They warned us of what they were going
to do, but we thought they were only bluffing. They
beat us fair and square. We were quits, and now we
are friends (
The Hindustan Times
April 4, 1981).
A memorial has been erected to commemorate the
dead, the victims of a gruesome tragedy. In the
museum are displayed photographs depicting
death and destruction on a mass scale. About 70
lakh Japanese visit Hiroshima every year to witness
this spectacle. In the course of conversation with the
Japanese, however, one can sense the hidden
