Honorable Target

WORLD BATTLEFRONTS

Already bombed dozens of times, Tokyo ate bitterness and outrage last week as never before. In two attacks within 48 hours more than 1,000 B-29s sent fire crackling through the heart of the world's third largest city. And sacrilege upon sacrilege, Radio Tokyo gasped that "the honorable teahouse in the honorable garden of the Imperial Palace . . . and the honorable grounds of the Akasaka detached palace* were destroyed."

In the clear moonlight of Thursday, pathfinder B-29s woke Tokyo up with 100-lb. oil bombs to mark the first target--Shinagawa, in the city's southeastern outskirts. Behind them thundered more than 550 bombers, the greatest force of B-29s yet used, with 4,500 tons of incendiaries. Almost two hours later, when the planes were gone, an estimated 3.2 square miles of Shinagawa, packed with freight yards, airplane-parts factories and war plants, were a raging blaze. Remarked one U.S. officer: "[It is] the most vulnerable combination of productivity, congestion and inflammability to be found anywhere in Japan."

Fire in the Wind. Less than 48 hours later, nearly 500 more B-29s returned. This time their target was farther north--the heart of modern Tokyo. While the fires from Thursday's raid still blazed, the planes dropped another 4,000 tons of gasoline jelly on the Marunouchi ("inside the castle walls") district. Said returning pilots: "Their searchlights picked us up at the coast, guided us in and took us right out to sea again . . . the toughest mission of my career. . . . Lots of Japanese came up at us right through their own flak. They were shooting down their fighters with their own flak."

The Imperial Palace, smack in Tokyo's center, was not officially a target but the 485 holy acres were in the target area and could not easily be avoided. A 70-mile ground wind, spreading the flames, apparently had even less respect for divine real estate.

Japan was appalled. By Tokyo's account, Premier Kantaro Suzuki "saw with his own eyes" how flames had hit the sanctified preserve, hastened to apologize to the Emperor for the "inexcusable outrage," then called an extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet and issued a "reverent statement relative to the burning of the Imperial Palace." Other broadcasts wailed that "the greater part of metropolitan Tokyo" was "literally scorched to the ground." To the Japanese people Suzuki sadly announced: "Our beautiful capital must be completely replanned from a bare start."

Ginza Goes. Actually Emperor Hirohito's property was only touched--this time. The Ginza, Tokyo's retail thoroughfare (once called "the busiest, noisiest, unhandsomest and most flamboyant of metropolitan streets"), was reported a mass of flames. Tokyo Week has cost the U.S. 31 Superfortresses or $18,600,000 in equipment and something for which there was no price--the lives of about 350 men. Since the B-29 attacks began, six months ago, the U.S. had lost 74 Superfortresses, carrying some 800 airmen. Japan had lost more than one-fifth of its capital.

. . .

This week the Army cleared the story of the B-29 Uncle Tom's Cabin, which flew to Tokyo on Dec. 27, and never returned. Other Superforts saw the Cabin, six miles above the target, rammed and ripped wide-open by a Jap fighter. Other Japs pressed in for the kill, but the staggering bomber fought them off and righted itself 3,000 feet below the formation, only to be crashed by another fighter. The Cabin pulled out again at 5,000 with one machine gun still firing; a third Jap suicide rammer sent it plummeting into Tokyo Bay in a pall of black smoke. In its seven-minute agony the Cabin had shot down eight other attackers. Air Force officers recommended posthumous decorations for all the crew, and the Medal of Honor for the Cabin's commander, Major John E. Krause, of Elmhurst, Ill.

* One and a half miles west of the Imperial Palace, Akasaka is known as the "Crown Prince's Palace."

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