WASHINGTON — On the heels of a recent announcement from Tokyo that the Japanese whaling fleet would resume killing humpback whales "for scientific purposes" since their numbers have recovered in recent years, the Pentagon today announced that, since Japanese numbers have nicely recovered since the Second World War, the United States will resume the atomic bombing of Japanese cities.

"Obviously the Japanese have recovered to the point where blasting three or four of their cities a year will be sustainable," said USAF General Howie Friezum.  "We're doing this for scientific purposes, of course.  We got some great data in 1945, after all, and our studies have really suffered as a result of the moratorium."

The General went on to outline what his team hoped to accomplish.  "Our researchers want to know how many Japanese cities have to be vaporized before they own up to Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the brutal occupation of Manchuria, the abomination of Korean "comfort women", modern Japan's near refusal to accept refugees, and so on.  We've been utterly fascinated by these ongoing displays of the complete and utter inability to demonstrate either empathy with or sympathy for others, all the while inserting self-pitying references to the nuclear devastation of Japanese cities into every movie, book, anime, and cat food commercial produced in Japan in the last sixty years.  So, I guess time will tell."

When asked which city would be experimented upon first, the General said, "To reveal that would be to risk affecting the outcome of the experiment.  Besides, why ruin the surprise?"