Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [216]
There was a strange little drama at Kagoshima that summer, when a Hellcat pilot was obliged to bail out over the airstrip, his plane on fire. He landed with bad burns to his face and hands, and was taken to the medical quarters for treatment. He lay in bed there for two days before being removed to a POW camp. When the Japanese pilots heard about his presence, they could not resist an opportunity to behold the human face of the enemy they hated so much. Four curious young Japanese crowded into the American’s room, and stood by his bed conversing as best his condition and their fragments of English allowed. His name was Murdoch. He was a college graduate, he said, who had been at university before he joined the navy. “Like me,” said Hijikata brightly—“I was a trainee teacher.”
Then came a moment which caused the Japanese much embarrassment. With difficulty because of his bandages, Murdoch tugged at his finger, removed and proffered a ring. Would the Japanese see that it reached his wife? They felt unable to accept, because they knew they would never be allowed to fulfil such a request. They wondered afterwards why he had made such a gesture of finality. Did he expect to die? To be shot? Probably. They never knew his fate, for next day he was taken away. But the Japanese fliers were moved by a sense of freemasonry with their adversary, once they met him face to face rather than at collision speeds.
LEMAY’S FORCE now began to play with the enemy. B-29s dropped leaflets listing eleven Japanese cities and urging: “Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, four (or more) of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs.” These would be aimed at military installations, but “unfortunately, bombs have no eyes…You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war.” In the words of an American historian, “this use of psychological warfare584 really made the generation of terror a formal objective of the fire raids.”
One day, walking alone in the forest in the Honshu country district to which he had been evacuated, ten-year-old Yoichi Watanuki heard a thunderous crash among the trees. Investigating, he found a container burst open on the ground. It contained bale upon bale of American propaganda bills, which had failed to spread as intended. The boy peered curiously at drawings of Roosevelt and Churchill in a rickshaw being pulled by a hapless Japanese emperor, above the simple slogan: END THE WAR. Yoichi was impressed by the quality of the paper, better than anything he had seen for years. Seizing a huge armful of the leaflets, he carried them triumphantly home, where they served as fuel to heat a delicious hot bath.
The outcome of the war was now plain to most of the Japanese people, though diehards clung to hope. Among these was one of Yoichi’s teachers. Early in 1945, when a B-29 crewman parachuted into their district, for some reason the man was led through the village only half-clad. “You see!” announced the teacher triumphantly. “This shows that the Americans are running short of clothing!” But Yoichi and a cluster of friends were much more impressed when an American fighter flew so low overhead one day that its wings almost touched the treetops. They saw the pilot’s grinning features in his open cockpit as he gave the children a careless wave, and were awed by such an insouciant display of power.
U.S. bomber losses fell to 0.3 percent per mission. LeMay himself was rewarded for his achievements by further promotion as well as decorations. When Gen. Carl Spaatz, old and ill, was appointed overall