Barbara Bush once accompanied her husband, President George Bush, on a state visit to Japan. During a formal luncheon at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, she found herself seated beside Japan's Emperor Hirohito.

"Was the former palace so old that it crumbled?" she asked, noting the building's apparent youth. "No," Hirohito tersely replied, "I'm afraid that you bombed it..."

[Shortly after Hirohito's death, a newspaper printed a story bearing the headline: "Hirohito's Body Moved."]