World Notes Japan

Brookings, Ore. (pop. 5,000), was the only community on the U.S. mainland to be bombed during World War II. The town is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the war's end in equally unique fashion: this week three Brookings high school students will tour Japan as guests of the pilot who flew the missions.

For former Imperial Japanese Navy Pilot Nobuo Fujita, 73, the youngsters' visit fulfills a long-standing promise. In September 1942, Fujita flew two raids over Brookings in a tiny seaplane, dropping incendiary bombs in an unsuccessful effort to ignite the surrounding thick forests. Twenty years later, the Brookings Junior Chamber of Commerce invited Fujita, by then a prospering businessman, to serve as honorary grand marshal of the town's azalea festival. Fujita was so moved by the gesture that he vowed to reciprocate by having local youngsters visit Japan, but his business subsequently failed, leaving him penniless. The industrious Fujita spent more than two decades saving the roughly $10,000 that will pay the students' travel costs. "After they have toured Japan," he says, "the war will finally be over for me."