i'm richard katz. i am sort of fascinated by the degree of misperception in both tokyo and washington of the other and i have had conversations of people who are descendents of some of the japanese leaders at the time. the thought they really believe that the united states was a proposal b plan b that the u.s. accepted the document that ratified the japanese control over china which of course the u.s. did not do. the fact that you really thought the u.s. might do this is incredible to my mind misperception of everything to a certain degree. if the american side from what i could see there were two groups in the leadership. both of them are kind of nuts about what they thought that they were well-informed people. on the one hand they had the state department in new japan well who insisted japan would never go to war with united states because they knew they were going to get smashed. some diplomats in the embassy said out of sheer desperation they might do it. he said let's take a very hard line because