Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [70]
Tokyo had begun occasional air raid drills circa 1930 but held relatively few until July 1941. However, the latter were likely morale-building efforts to inure the population to prospects for war. In any case, the Ministry of Home Affairs slowly increased the size of existing fire departments and created new ones in selected industrial areas, although still relying upon amateur forces.
But the expansion of civil defense created its own problems. A postwar assessment concluded, “Men were recruited so rapidly that proper training was not possible. Peacetime fire departments were increased from three to five times their normal size. Tokyo’s department was enlarged from 2,000 firemen to 8,100 men, including 2,700 junior firemen in 287 stations. An effort was made to increase personnel to 12,500, but the manpower shortage in Japan made it prohibitive.”
By contrast, in 1945 the Fire Department of New York was composed of more than 9,000 men. Organized into 365 companies (225 engine, 126 hook-and-ladder, and several rescue, specialist, and support companies), they could access more than 91,000 hydrants throughout the city.
Japanese administrative policy only complicated the situation. As in Germany, in major metropolitan areas the police oversaw fire protection, but the Japanese variant lacked the Nazi advantage of competence. Consequently, Allied analysts deemed Japanese efforts unprofessional because local police were incompetent in firefighting. The situation was compounded by vastly different missions and mind-sets: the police focused on controlling a large population rather than protecting it from external threats of biblical proportions.
While Japan’s actual firefighting structure made sense—cities were divided into divisions, battalions, and stations—equipment proved wholly insufficient. Not even the Tokyo department’s considerable expansion was adequate. From 280 trucks, carts, and portable pumps in 1943 the capital’s inventory grew to 1,117 two years later, as Tokyo received nearly all the wartime production. Excepting a few American-made rigs dating from the 1920s, the 559 domestically produced 450 gallon-per-minute pumps were among the largest in Japan—a fraction of what American rigs could produce. The deficit was taken up by commandeering lesser equipment from outlying towns.
The “large equipment” was laughable, even in high-priority areas. A fire company’s typical inventory included a four-pound axe, two twelve-foot ladders, two pike poles, two four-foot crowbars, an eighteen-foot length of one-inch rope, a fifty-foot length of one-and-a-half-inch rope, two smoke masks, three spare nozzles, forty sections of two-and-a-half-inch single-jacketed linen hose, and two hose carts. Almost any American fireman visiting Japan would have been astonished at the absence of basic gear. One survey noted, “The common portable fire extinguisher of the CO2, carbon tetrachloride, foam, and water pump can types were not used by Japanese firemen.”
In one of the most urbanized nations on earth there were four aerial ladders: three in Tokyo and one in Kyoto. But in 1945 only one of Tokyo’s trucks was operational, a German-built eighty-five-foot extension. Their 500-gpm pumps were therefore largely useless.
As an island nation, Japan should have led the world in marine fire protection. But in 1942, Tokyo had merely three small pumper boats to cover perhaps 100 miles of waterfront, canals, and rivers. By 1945, eight “navy-type patrol boats” had been obtained, featuring 500-gpm pumps. The boats produced the largest water streams in the country, but still barely one inch wide. In vivid contrast, at the same time New York City operated ten boats, most capable of 7,000 gpm and two producing 18,000 and 20,000 gpm.
Even where fire trucks were available, many were idle. A shortage of mechanics and spare parts rendered approximately