This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

This is CBS, I on the World.

I'm John Batchelor.

Professor Gary J. Bass continues about his monumental reading of 50,000 pages of manuscripts of the tribunal that was held between 1946 and 1948 in Tokyo for war crimes of the Japanese Empire.

The book is Judgment of Tokyo, World War II on trial, and the making of modern Asia.

It is now March of 1948.

The trial continues.

It's coming to a dramatic conclusion.

However, arriving in Tokyo is a man that we know very well here in the 21st century.

George Kennan of the State Department, a man associated with the Telegram X that is entirely about the containment of the threat of communism out of the Soviet Union.

Kenan is told to go meet MacArthur and express your ideas about how he is handling Japan's transformation from a military cult during the wars of aggression

in these last years into a modern state. George Kennan at first is rebuked by General

MacArthur who thinks he's just another harassing State Department executive who's

expecting to be treated like a prince.

That is not Kennan's style.

And eventually, Kennan is staying at the Imperial Hotel wins a second audience with MacArthur.

And herein is a dominant conversation for my understanding of what was happening in 1948 and what we still

understand today about Asia. Professor, this is a spectacular scene. George Kennan and Douglas

MacArthur sitting in his office talking about Japan as a bulwark, bullwork for what? What was Kenan's idea and what did

MacArthur make of it? Thank you. Thank you. So what I'm trying to do in the book is not just

tell the story, the trial, but also use the story of the trial to talk about what else is happening in the formation of Asia as

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