Fire in the Night

Fire fell on Kagoshima in the night, as suddenly as an earthquake, but with far greater violence. Peacefully, Kagoshima's 200,000 Japanese citizens had gone to bed, leaving the city and naval anchorage brightly lighted. Then, at low level, the B-29s roared in. Two searchlights aimlessly fingered the sky and quickly paled into nothing as almost 1,000 tons of incendiary bombs turned the city into a flaming caldron. There was only one dark spot in the glowing mass: a baseball park.

Within a week, other secondary cities got the same treatment--Shizuoka, Toyohashi, Fukuoka, Kagamigahara. Small as they were (under 325,000 population), they contained valuable war plants, arsenals, little "shadow factories" dispersed in flimsy dwellings. In some cases one raid was considered enough to write off the productive capacity of a city. One such case was the great naval arsenal at Kure, last big plant of its type.

The 21st Bomber Command had shifted to smaller cities because it had run out of primary targets. In Washington last week,* the command's good-looking, serious, young (38) chief, Major General Curtis E. LeMay, explained: "We have destroyed the five largest cities in Japan and any one of these would be a major disaster. We have done this with less than half the strength we will have in the Pacific. We have the capacity to devastate Japan and we will do so if she does not surrender. Missions of 1,000 planes will come before long. ... In a few months we will be running out of targets."

*At the controls of a B29, General LeMay flew the 4,640 miles from Hawaii to Washington for a new nonstop record: 20 hrs. 15 min.

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