The People Wait

After four years of unceasing war, Japan prepared anew for war. Floodlights cut white arcs through Tokyo's dark as work on inadequate air-raid shelters went on around the clock. Men were at work in one corner of the Palace grounds. No one could see what they were doing, but a good guess was that they were building an air-raid shelter for the Emperor. Laborers studded Japan's other big cities with antiaircraft guns.

No precautions had been necessary in the four years of war against almost wingless China. But Tokyo's seven millions live in an area the size of Chicago;* half their million homes are built of wood and paper. The city's three main highways are only 40 feet wide; its four inadequate railway terminals are choked even by holiday traffic. Water reserves are inadequate, fire-fighting equipment is antiquated. In the Philippines the U.S. also had a tinder-box capital (see p. 77), but the U.S. had enough bombers to make a death trap of Tokyo.

War with China had been a war of vic tory. Newsreels had shown heaps of Chinese dead, never a Japanese body. But even victory had pinched Japan. Last week, as for many, many weeks, rice was rationed and bread, when available, was sour and heavy with acorn flour. Press notices warned: "Vegetable-Hungry People Not To Raid Fields in City's Suburbs."

Two years ago Japanese had joked when the Government cut down the strength of rice wine, had said that even goldfish could live in it. No one joked last week as he drank synthetic wine of potatoes and acorns.

Yokohama, Japan's greatest seaport, rusted under blockade, with whole streets deserted, warehouses and offices closed. Gasoline was no longer available to civilians; travelers' luggage was hauled from Yokohama to Tokyo by bicycle and oxcart.

The Japanese were used to war scares. There had been press campaigns against Russia and against Britain, but this was different. The Japanese were told by their leaders that the U.S. sought to destroy them (see p. 27). They knew that now all the power they had wrung out of 47 years of blood and toil was at stake. With the weariness of a tired man about to be summoned to a task greater than his strength, the Japanese people waited.

* Pop: 3,700,000.

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