"I See No Reason . . ."

In 1942, U.S. fighting men, backed up against the thin rampart from Pearl Harbor to Australia, saw their Jap opponent as cruel, treacherous, practically inhuman. Now, through more experienced eyes, they see him a little more clearly: a soldier still treacherous, but with a certain amount of resourcefulness, a vast supply of a peculiar kind of courage.

A Navy carrier pilot, Lieut, (j.g.) Peter Hamilton Hazard, who was shot down off Okinawa, saw some of that courage at Iwo Jima. He wrote, in a letter published with his obituary by his old school, St. Paul's:

"I was impressed by the Jap commander's words, even though I realize they may have been put into his mouth by some publicity.office in Tokyo. The main thing is that he will live up to them. 'I will die here,' he said. That might have been said at the Alamo, or at any other fortress that has been defended to the last man, and I see no reason for denying our enemies recognition for qualities that in ourselves we would consider glorious."

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