The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [23]
“The low altitude gave the B-29s a greater bomb capacity, and I loaded up those sons of bitches with incendiaries. No more of this high-altitude tiddlywinks, playing hit-and-miss with targets that are too far below us to pinpoint. This time we didn’t need to pinpoint anything. The target was the whole damn city. Hard to miss that one.” He slapped a folder of papers against his leg. “It worked too. We should have been doing this to those Nip bastards from the beginning. We’ve gutted Germany’s war machine, and now we’re doing it to the Japs. But this is even better. You know what their damn cities are made out of? Paper and wood. I wish I’d have seen it myself, especially at night. Had to settle for the recon reports, but I’ve got ’em right here. In the last ten days, we’ve incinerated what looks to be fifteen or sixteen square miles of the Japanese capital. Incinerated. Gone. Flat damn ground. We have to assume that the number of enemy casualties is in the high tens of thousands, maybe double that. They’re not likely to give us that information on their own. But dammit, Admiral, this is how the war ought to be fought. It worked in Germany and it’s working here. Problem is, I’m having trouble getting an adequate supply of incendiaries from the mainland. Damn pestiferous supply bastards keep telling me that the factories can’t produce them as quick as I’m dropping them. What a load of crap. Some asses back home need to be kicked.”
LeMay tossed the file on the table, reached for his cigar, resting on the nearby ashtray. He jabbed the cigar in his mouth, sat back with a self-satisfied grin, a rarity.
“Learning to smoke these things. Not bad. Prefer a pipe, but can’t keep the mold off ’em out here in this tropical hellhole.”
Nimitz ignored the cigar smoke, pulled the folder close, opened, saw the reports, the number of sorties each night, the bomb loads, and then high-altitude recon photos of the aftermath, the enormous city showing a great gray stain, as though one large hand had simply wiped it away. My God, he thought. How many civilians? He knew LeMay wouldn’t listen to any lecture about casualties, and Nimitz had already heard intelligence reports about Japanese factories spread all through civilian neighborhoods. LeMay knows that too, he thought. So, who do we blame? He’s right on that count. They are all the enemy.
LeMay seemed to wait for the pat on the back, and Nimitz sat back in the chair, sipped the bourbon.
“Amazing. Impressive.”
“You bet your ass it’s impressive. I don’t know what the hell’s going on in Washington, rather not know. But Hap Arnold needs to shove this report and these photos under every face in the War Department, maybe give FDR a good look too. I’m so damn sick of …” He paused, seemed to catch himself.
“Sick of what, General?”
LeMay’s face curled into a hard, silent growl.
“You know as well as I do that we should have passed by the damn Philippines and put all our energy right into Japan. You know that, don’t you? MacArthur is wasting time and men and supplies to liberate his private little kingdom. He’s taken months away from our timetables, when you know damn well that if he had given you his people, his ships, his planes, you’d be kicking down Hirohito’s palace door by now.”
Nimitz knew that if LeMay was smoking that same cigar in front of MacArthur, it would be Nimitz who was being blasted for whatever incompetence LeMay felt like blasting. Nimitz said slowly, “Whether I agreed with the War Department’s decision to go along with Doug’s invasion of the Philippines isn’t as important now as what he’s accomplished there. I’ve gotten word that Manila is in his hands, that the Japs are routed pretty badly. The harbor is usable, and we’re moving supplies in there as quick as we can. I’m used to him getting the headlines. All the headlines. He needs it. Fortunately for me, strutting across a stage on Broadway has never been my ambition.”
“Oh, there’s only one stage, Admiral. Doug won’t allow anyone else up there, you can be sure of that. But this war would be over …”
“You don’t know that.