The terror that ended World War II
Frank Brennan; 24/6/08
Kevin Rudd visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on his first prime ministerial visit to Japan this month, the first serving Western leader to do so. His critics were outraged. Herald-Sun columnist Andrew Bolt subscribed to the theory that ‘to visit is to encourage the offensive notion that the Japanese were victims of a western crime, and not of their own insane militarism’. The time has come to admit the Japanese were the victims of both. The US response to Japan’s insane militarism was, to quote the Second Vatican Council, ‘a crime against God and man himself’.