A much older friend of mine, a college professor who worked in cryptography during WW2 and had many insider contacts in Washington, related the following story. In the late 1940s in occupied Japan, an American colonel was relaxing in the evening with one of his Japanese mistresses when a formation of US bombers flew overhead, very similar to the ones which had so recently incinerated innocent Japanese men and women and children by the hundreds of thousands all over her country. Being of a cruel disposition, he asked his companion what she thought of the display. She replied "silver birds beautiful in twilight sky," capturing in six chilling words an overtly unexpressed anguish and hatred so deep that I would be astonished if it did not one day result in revenge on a gigantic scale.