Death from the Sky

As Captain John G. Schmitt Jr., 34, of Chalmers, Ind. was flying over the island of Okinawa one morning last week, the fire warning light flashed in his F-100 Super Sabre, was followed by a violent explosion. A ten-year veteran of jet flying assigned to Okinawa's Kadena Air Force Base, Schmitt managed to head his crippled plane away from the densely populated city of Ishikawa (pop. 30,000) before he bailed out. But the pilotless ship suddenly veered, headed straight for the modem, U.S.-built Miyamori School, where 1,306 Okinawan children were having their morning milk break.

One of the children glanced out the schoolhouse window, saw the plane and screamed, "Air raid!" The pupils dropped to the floor as the plane grazed the schoolhouse roof, showered glass on the children, spewed flaming gasoline on an older school building next door, and blew up with a roar that sent burning wreckage raining through a ten-block area of flimsy wood-and-paper houses.

In the holocaust that followed, help came quickly and heroically from U.S. servicemen. A marine rushed through a solid wall of flame to rescue a little girl. Others made a firebreak to contain the flames. A thousand servicemen swarmed to the scene, clawed through hot rubble with their bare hands. Twenty-five helicopters shuttled the injured to hospitals. A jet plane flew in from Japan with 35,000 units of tetanus serum to combat infection. Claims commissioners, given orders to "cut all red tape," quickly went to work compensating families for destroyed property. Shelter was found for the homeless. But, despite all efforts, 16 people died (twelve of them children) and 121 were injured.

Captain Schmitt, officially absolved of blame in the crash, offered his apologies to the townspeople, through the press, and 35 airmen attended Buddhist funeral services for the children. Though Kame-jiro Senaga, leader of the pro-Communist Minren Party, tried to make political capital out of the accident, no one else did, and most Okinawans seemed genuinely impressed by U.S. rescue efforts following the crash. And any critics would have to ignore a startling safety record: the crash caused the first Okinawan fatalities in 14 years of U.S. occupation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.