Meetinghouse
If General Ushijima hoped that by destroying the Americans at Okinawa he would spare his homeland the horrors of war, then the Thirty-second Imperial Army’s furious defense of the island was an exercise in mass futility. Even as the fighting raged on Okinawa, the cities of Japan were burning. In the wreckage of thousands of homes, men and women sobbed the names of loved ones, buried in the debris left by Bi-ni-ju-ku, the dreaded B-29 bomber.
Squadrons of these beautiful silver planes had come with increasing frequency from the south to terrorize the people of Japan. When they appeared over a metropolitan center, the next hours were filled with suffering for the humanity massed below. It had been that way for several months, since March, when General Curtis Lemay, commander of the Twenty-first Bomber Command in the Mariana Islands, discovered the strategy needed to knock down the cities of Japan.
When he first inherited his job in January 1945, Lemay was faced with a paradox: the B-29, a superior weapon, available in sufficient numbers to perform the most ambitious kinds of missions against the Home Islands, was not working out as it should have. Something was wrong with the way the machine was being used by aerial tacticians. Doctrines established in the air war over Europe were not succeeding in Asia. Lemay had come to remedy the situation.
At thirty-eight, he was a strategic bombing specialist, a “hard-nose,” a soldier dedicated to the belief that the heavy bomber could effect the destruction of any nation. A veteran of the Army Air Force, he had first joined the fledgling service in the budget-poor days of 1928. After graduation from Ohio State, Lemay became a lieutenant in an army that boasted precious little in the way of an air arm. He lived through the pioneer days, times when men feared for their lives every time they went up in rickety machines. Then he gravitated to the bombardment section of the tiny service and built up impressive experience in the primitive art of attacking an enemy with long-range aircraft.
When the United States entered World War II, Curtis Lemay began to implement his theoretical training. From England, he flew against the German Luftwaffe and quickly learned the rude facts of modern air strategy. Forced to improvise tactics in daily combat, Lemay proved a brilliant, resourceful commander, whose bomber squadrons always penetrated German defenses to hit their targets. In spite of constant attack, the B-17’s of the English Air Force gradually began to hurt Germany’s capacity to wage war. Curtis Lemay, as leader of the Third Bombardment Division, was known as a hard-driving taskmaster, a ruthlessly efficient exponent of aerial bombardment. On the basis of this impressive record, General Hap Arnold saw him as a natural choice to tackle the problems surrounding a new bomber which had just begun to operate in the Pacific, and in June of 1944 he recalled Lemay to the States.
The B-29 itself was an awesome weapon, capable of nearly twice the performance of the time-tested B-17 being used in Europe. Built by Boeing, the silver-painted four-engine aircraft was 99 feet long, 27 feet 9 inches high, with a wing span of slightly over 141 feet. Its armament included twelve 50-caliber machine guns and a 20-millimeter cannon in the tail. The B-29 could operate at 38,000 feet and cruise at over 350 miles per hour. It could fly 3,500 miles with four tons of bombs. It was the answer to the Army Air Force’s search for a Very Long Range bomber. It could reach across the Pacific from great distances and strike at the enemy’s industries. It could, in short, alter the balance of the war. But so far the efforts to use it effectively in the Pacific had brought nothing but frustration.
Lemay spent the summer familiarizing himself with the big bomber and learning to fly it. In the fall he was sent to China, where he took command of B-29 raiding missions from airfields around Chengtu. His job there was almost impossible.
Chengtu was the wrong place for such an operation. The basic problem was one of logistics. All supplies for the raiders had to be flown in over the Hump, that formidable barrier of mountains otherwise known as the Himalayas. Gas, oil, bombs, bullets, food, incidental supplies, were brought to China by transport planes. Though more and more tonnage was moved each month by this means, it was never enough to mount a massive offensive. Rarely did more than one hundred bombers take off together on a mission. Lemay was frustrated by the failure of his planes to evidence their destructive capability. Washington, also disillusioned by the Chengtu situation, gradually began to shift emphasis away from that area, and at the turn of the year Lemay was moved to Guam. There in the Marianas, shorter supply lines would eliminate the most vexing problems of the China operation.
Chengtu could not be called a complete failure, however. Roosevelt and Churchill had paid a political debt to Chiang Kai-shek by stationing the big bombers in his country. Disillusioned at the apparent lack of interest in his cause, the Generalissimo had been considerably heartened by the decision to mount an attack on the enemy from China. His war-weary people also were cheered by the sight of the B-29’s flying toward the Japanese homeland. From a practical standpoint, too, the China experience had value. Chengtu was a proving ground, a training base for both crew members and commanders of the new bombardment force. Lessons learned there were remembered in the Marianas as the Twenty-first Bomber Command started to fly to Japan.
During the first two months of 1945 Lemay sent missions out to prove his theory that he could level the enemy. By March, he had accomplished almost nothing. The enemy had not been hurt badly. In fact, the morale of civilians in Japan rose markedly as they found their patterns of daily life unchanged. Even some of the Japanese leaders regained confidence as they noted that the national war machine still functioned at a high rate. So far the B-29 had not performed well, and Curtis Lemay knew it.
Several factors combined to thwart the bombing efforts. Weather was paramount. Between the Marianas and Japan it was atrocious. Jet streams blew at two hundred miles an hour across the skies. Heavy cloud cover enveloped targets repeatedly. Bombs dropped from thirty thousand feet were scattered by the winds. In the first six weeks after Lemay arrived on Guam, only one opportunity arose for visual sighting on a city. All other raids had to be accomplished by means of radar, which was still unreliable and so caused frequent misses on aiming points. Eleven priority targets in the Home Islands were virtually undamaged despite repeated attacks. One, the Mushashino aircraft-engine plant in Tokyo, was functioning at ninety-six percent of capacity though the B-29’s had gone after it several times.
The big planes themselves were beginning to malfunction at an alarming rate as the strain of flying at over thirty thousand feet for long distances caused engine breakdowns. The tremendous burden of climbing to rarified altitudes was showing in daily operations reports listing aborted missions, in which disabled aircraft were unable to reach targets in Japan. As March began, Lemay surveyed his domain and wondered just what he could do to effect a miracle.
For several weeks he had had a bold plan in mind, conceived from his own observations and in conferences with other B-29 commanders in the Marianas. It was a daring thrust, a gamble for the big prize—the destruction of Japanese war production. He felt that percentages favored its success. Yet, not sure of what reaction it would receive, he chose not to mention it to General Hap Arnold, Air Corps Chief of Staff. He simply went ahead with his operation.
Orders were cut on March 7 for implementation on March 9. Three wings, the 73rd, the 313th and the 314th, would fly the mission. The target was the northeast urban section of Tokyo, code-named Meetinghouse. Bombing runs would commence on the city just after midnight. Bombs would be released at altitudes between five thousand and nine thousand feet. All guns would be removed from the B-29’s. Only incendiary bombs would be used on the congested wooden homes of Meetinghouse.
To crew members on the flight, the idea of flying over the most heavily defended city in Japan at five thousand feet without guns was shocking. Intelligence experts on Guam estimated that the enemy had massed 331 heavy-caliber guns, 307 automatic-firing weapons, 312 single-engine fighters and 105 twin-engine interceptors around Tokyo. Yet Lemay intended to challenge this defensive arsenal by going in low, at night and without ammunition.
His reasoning was quite sound. The key ingredients in his plan were the night attack and the low altitude. Both struck at the Japanese in their most vulnerable spots. Japan had so far failed to develop an adequate night fighter which could shoot down the B-29. Neither had it converted its antiaircraft weapons to radar control. Thus the low-level assault would tend to confuse the manually controlled weapons surrounding Meetinghouse.
If these suppositions were correct, Lemay had eliminated the need for guns in his own planes. By so doing, he also reduced the weight of the bombers and allowed for increased bombloads. Other bonuses followed.
Because the B-29’s did not have to fly at great heights, less gas was needed, permitting a further increase in bombload. The lower altitude also reduced strain on the engines and decreased the probability of malfunction during and after the mission.
Buoyed up by these positive factors, General Lemay hoped to drop over two thousand tons of incendiary bombs on the people of Tokyo and incinerate part of the Japanese factory system, which had been decentralized and flourished inside the private homes of the city.
One danger was apparent. The Japanese might just adjust to his unorthodox tactics in time to inflict horrible losses on the defenseless bombers. If they did, the Marianas would be a land of the bereaved and Curtis Lemay proved a fool.
The Meetinghouse flight went ahead as planned.
On March 9, at twilight, thirteen hundred motors turned over and roared into the night as 325 massive B-29’s left their hardstands and formed a continuing line of bombers moving toward the ends of runways. One by one they lifted into the sky. Since the flight plan had eliminated the need for rendezvous, the B-29’s moved singly to the north, gaining altitude as they went.
The first twelve aircraft in each wing were pathfinders. Their mission was to mark the target area in Meetinghouse by sowing their incendiaries in a huge X across the congested section. Hundreds of magnesium, napalm and phosphorus canisters would ignite and spread like a beckoning torch.
The long line of planes droned toward the mainland. Over the island of Chichi Jima, in the Bonins, the Japanese sent up sporadic antiaircraft fire but found no victims.
In the darkness, the B-29’s made landfall by radar, using checkpoints on the Bose Peninsula, southeast of Tokyo, and moving toward them for the turns to a final approach on the unsuspecting mass of humanity.
As midnight arrived, lights were mostly out in the thousands of homes jammed into the neighborhood around the Sumida River, several miles northeast of the Imperial Palace. The moon shone coldly on the waters of Tokyo Bay. A chill, twenty-eight-mile-an-hour wind tossed paper through narrow streets.
Though many civilians had heard on the radio that B-29’s were active that night, it appeared that they were well east of Tokyo and heading away to the north.
The pathfinders turned west and roared in low and fast. They slipped across the darkened city and loosed a series of E-46 bombs, each of which exploded at twenty-five hundred feet and scattered thirty-eight more pipe-like canisters into the wind. The two-foot-long projectiles fell into the middle of wooden homes and began to burn ferociously.
As frightened civilians moved into the open streets, the pathfinders fled swiftly to the south. Behind them a blazing X marked the target for more onrushing B-29’s with their loads of incendiaries. The airplanes came individually and spewed their cargoes into a spreading sea of red and white flame. To the first crews over the target it was obvious that Tokyo would burn badly that night. “It looked like a forest fire,” one man reported. In thirty minutes the blaze was completely out of control. There was no way to stop it. It roared upward for hundreds of feet and moved rapidly outward in many directions. The high winds threw burning embers across firebreaks and pushed a solid mass of flame before them. And still the planes came in, dropping cluster upon cluster of magnesium, phosphorus and napalm. Tracer bullets arched up toward the gleaming underbellies of the bombers. Antiaircraft shells exploded among them. The sky became an unbelievable panorama of light, noise and movement.
As the fires expanded and intensified, bombers coming in over the target began to have trouble. Violent updrafts from the whirling storm in the city tore at the fuselages and threatened to rip them apart. Instead of worrying about the antiaircraft guns, the pilots struggled to control their ponderous planes. Turbulence tossed the B-29’s several thousand feet in seconds and they went straight up or down at dizzying rates. In some ships terrified crew members crawled on their hands and knees and shouted, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” as M-47 and M-69 canisters fell out of bomb bays toward the inferno below. Battered B-29’s got out as quickly as they could.
Above them, one plane circled the target area for a long time. It carried General Tom Power, Lemay’s Chief of Staff, Eager to observe the results of the raid, Power stayed and stayed over the awesome sight. The target sector of the city was dying beneath his feet. As artists sketched the scene, Power radioed back to Guam that the gamble had worked. Lemay had revolutionized bombing technique.
Power’s plane finally left for home, but on the streets of Tokyo there was no place to go. Frenzy mounted as the heat rose. People ran and fell to the ground, the breath pulled from their lungs. Some died standing up in the close-packed, airless shelters. Inside the Meiji-za Theatre, bodies were stacked eight feet high. Those who chose to go outside again fought each other savagely to escape. Many stood waist-deep in streams and pools, to sink beneath the surface as the fire sucked away oxygen. Everywhere people clawed their throats but found no air to breathe. Police and fire officials were trampled by rioting crowds. Fire-fighting equipment—ninety-nine pieces in all—was destroyed in the intense heat.
The only possible exits were the bridges spanning the Sumida River. Across the river, in the blackness of the wholly untouched portions of the city, victims could see safety. Thousands ran in that direction while screaming and tearing at each other. Men and women were pushed into the river to drown. Faces were smashed in, fingers, arms, legs and genitals battered and torn from bodies. The bridges across the Sumida became a battlefield of panic. Hundreds of bodies lay in mounds, just a short way from freedom.
From his shelter in the suburb of Arakawa, a young boy named Wakabayashi came out to see the extent of the damage. A B-29 dropped a shower of magnesium canisters, one of which broke open and sprayed him. His hand was badly burned but he was not otherwise hurt. He helped his neighbors put out some of the small fires with “hitataki,” bamboo poles tipped with cotton cloth and soaked in water. But there were too many canisters plunging from the sky. Wakabayashi and the others left the area, which was rapidly becoming an inferno of crackling fire. They went to a river and saw hundreds of people standing up in the water, packed against each other. They were all dead. Wakabayashi stumbled on, away from the silent victims.
By three o’clock in the morning the last B-29 swept low over the city and scattered its seven tons into the billowing fire. Then the noise of motors trailed off to the south. Of the mission’s 325 bombers, 279 had gotten to the target. Antiaircraft fire, which had weakened as the flames intensified, ceased as the planes disappeared. The crackle of wildfire mingling with cries in the night remained as witness to the efficiency of the intruders, who formed a long, erratic line toward the south and the Marianas.
In the rear planes, men attempted to drive away the most lingering memory of the mission. Almost all were nauseated because their nostrils were filled with an awful, stomach-wrenching stench that could never be forgotten—the odor of burned human flesh. Some airmen vomited onto the cabin floors and onto their clothes as the foul breezes wafted into the B-29’s. Only then did a sense of the enormity of the disaster reach its perpetrators. As they rode the peaceful skies back to their home bases, they still smelled the remains of charred bodies.
At six o’clock in the morning of March 10, a Japanese student stood on her roof four miles west of Meetinghouse. She saw a glow in the eastern sky and called her family to see the beautiful sunrise. It was not a sunrise they saw, but the funeral pyre for over 100,000 souls, slaughtered in the most ferocious holocaust ever visited on a civilized community.
Almost sixteen square miles of Tokyo was now flat, scorched and still smoldering. In certain places, one could stand and see for miles. Nearly two thousand tons of incendiary bombs had been dropped into the most densely populated region in the world. Over 250,000 buildings had crumbled under flames which had reached an intensity of 2,000 degrees.
Rescue teams that morning were visibly overwhelmed as they were confronted by mountains of their dead countrymen. Despite the gauze masks the living wore, they retched helplessly as they lifted and separated the remains. Many of the victims were charred; almost all had suffocated.
In the rest of the city, a subdued population went to work. As details of the bombing spread through offices and factories, the people of Tokyo knew that the B-29 had, for the first time, assumed mastery over their lives.
On Guam, senior officers of the Twenty-first Bomber Command scanned photographs and reports of the raid. Curtis Lemay, who had staked his career on success and whose bold gamble had been proven sound, knew that he had found the necessary tactic to reduce Japan to ashes. He had lost only 14 planes and 140 men in devastating the capital. He immediately ordered additional sorties, and in the next days the B-29’s, loaded with incendiaries, set out for Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and other industrial cities. In April and May, while the Japanese Thirty-second Army was dying on Okinawa, Lemay’s crews killed many thousands of Japanese civilians. At night the skies there were reddened by smoldering factories and homes. During the day, civilians clogged the roads leading to the countryside. They had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Behind them smoke hid the remains of their families and friends.
Much of Tokyo was now in ruins. After the first fire raid on March 9, the B-29’s had come back three times. By the end of May, over fifty percent of the capital was destroyed. Several million people had been evacuated. Emperor Hirohito walked through the acres of devastation and tried to encourage survivors by his presence. They bowed reverently before his divinity and, for a moment, dried their tears.
The average civilian was willing to entrust his deliverance from terror to the abilities of statesmen and militarists. Beyond that he could not worry. His immediate needs were too painful.