Death of an American Illusion

Bataan taught the US a thing it had forgotten: pride of arms, pride in what the young men could do what tested. 
Batann taught the US a humiliating thing, too: that U.S. soldiers could be beaten,could be taught the fullest ignominy of unconditional surrencer. And they could be given this lesson by the funny, myopic, bucktoothed, bandlegged, pint-sized Jap - who, it suddenly appeared, was taut-muscled, courageous, vastly menacing. 
before Pearl harbor there was only one world to U.S citizen. the world, the only world that americans believed in or cared about, was the U.S. The rest of mankind was, in an American sense, unreal. the American might - and did - throng the tourist spots like London and Paris, 'discover' Bali or the Dalmatian Coast, but he could never quite believe that these outlandish foreign parts could have a real connection with his world.