Squeals and Threats

The great B-29 Superfortresses from Saipan were coming over Tokyo even more often than the enemy had feared. Japan's leaders were foaming at the mouth. The two-day slaughter by Jap planes in the open city of Manila back at Christmastide, 1941, was forgotten; so were all the other cases in which Jap planes had deliberately terror-bombed or strafed civilians.

A Domei commentator chattered hysterically that the B-29 crewmen were "albino apes." Any who parachuted to the sacred soil "after blindly bombing Tokyo," he threatened, would be killed on the spot by the angry Japanese people.* To other Jap propagandists, Superfortressmen were "enemies of civilization and humanity," outside the protection of international law. International law had not saved the first U.S. flyers captured by the Japanese after raiding Tokyo in 1942; some of Jimmy Doolittle's men had been done to death. U.S. airmen did not doubt that the frenzied Japanese in 1944-45 would make good their threats. But the bombing of Japan would go on.

Moon & Cloud. In four Superfort attacks on Tokyo, no U.S. airmen were taken prisoner. The first two strikes had been in daylight. The third blow, by a "medium force" (20 to 30 planes, instead of the 70 to 100 counted by the enemy in the "sizable" daylight attack groups), struck Ihe light industry section of Tokyo at the full moon, but received no help from it because of clouds. The planes cruised over the sprawling city for hours, bombing by instrument, unable to observe results. Every plane returned.

For the fourth attack the B-29s again used daylight. In "substantial force" they returned to their first target, the Nakajima aircraft plant at Musashina, eleven miles northwest of Tokyo's heart, and stayed over it 90 minutes, using precision bombsights in good visibility.

Another air war was being fought, incidental to the main bout over Tokyo. Jap planes were sneak-raiding the B-29 roost at Saipan, inflicting moderate damage and losing substantially in the process. U.S. planes were raiding the Japs' bases in the Volcano and Bonin Islands to cut down the raids on Saipan and give the B-29s immunity along the 1,500-mile run to Tokyo.

* But for home consumption Tokyo Radio had calmer words: "Why worry? Let the enemy planes come. All you have to do is shoot them down, and if a fire starts all you have to do is put it out."

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