The main barrier between East and West today is that the white man is not willing to give up his superiority,

and the colored man is no longer willing to endure his inferiority.

The white man is a century behind the colored man.

The white man is still thinking in terms of colonies and

colonial government. The colored man knows that colonies and colonial-mindedness are anachronisms.

The colonial way is over, whether the white man knows it or not. The man of Asia today is not a colonial, and he has made up

his mind he will never be a colonial again. In short, if the white man does not now save himself

by discovering that all men are really born free and equal, he may not be able to save himself at all,

for the colored man is going to insist on that human equality

and that freedom.

Pearl Buck, writing in the New York Times magazine,

May 1942.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century.

Music Episode 3. Episode 398. An incontrovertible fact.

Last time I ended the episode by describing to you Operation Vengeance, which was the American attack that led to the

killing of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku on April 18, 1943.

The death of Yamamoto came as a shock to the Japanese. The news was not made public until

May 21st, the day Yamamoto's ashes arrived in Japan.

By then, the Japanese public was also having to absorb the news that the Americans and Canadians

had landed on the Aleutian island of Atu. That island had been seized a year earlier,

at the same time as the Battle of Midu. That island had been seized a year earlier, at the same time as the Battle of Midway.

...