Remember Pearl Harbor

The Battle of Japan began last week.

Only two days before a silky-voiced Tokyo announcer had scoffed at the very idea: "The Chinese Government," said he, "has been spreading the most laughable, false propaganda that the Japanese capital has been bombed. The people of Tokyo pleasantly enjoy the quiet, peaceful and delightful spring days, observing the beautiful cherry blossoms. Now the residents of Tokyo are celebrating our glorious victories under very bright lights."

And then in broad daylight, at 12:30 Saturday noon, it happened. In from the sea swept a fleet of U.S. bombers, and for the first time in 2,602 years the island cities of Japan were subjected to enemy assault. Smashed in an instant of terror was the myth of immunity the people of Japan had accepted for generations as gospel.

Japan Could Be Struck at Home. The Japanese people heard the thundering news in the crash of bombs and the frenetic hammer of U.S. machine guns. They saw it in the smoke rising from fires on the edge of Tokyo, third largest city of the world (pop. 6,581,000). They saw it in bomb wreckage in Tokyo's famed port of Yokohama, in their great airplane-manufacturing center at Nagoya (pop. 1,249,000), in Kobe (pop. 1,006,000), the Glasgow of Japan. They saw it in the flames from incendiaries that licked through the jerry-built, paper-structure houses where Japan's little men live.

Only the Jap could tell how much damage the bombers did, and at first the Jap made the usual announcement: the invader's bombs had landed in schools and hospitals. But the world could tell, from the quavering voices of the Jap radio announcers, from the changing stories that came over the air, how thunderous had been the surprise.

Next day the Jap had two more air-raid alarms, and this week he still hissed with dismay. He sacked the chief of the home command, Lieut. General Akira Muto, and he filled the air with illogical or contradictory blasts which only seemed to add to the magnitude of the bombers' success. Contradicting his story that only schools and hospitals had been hit, a Tokyo dispatch (via Berlin) announced that the Government would pay to rebuild the industrial plants that had been damaged. More important, he said that the raiders were twin-motored North American B-25s and that those which escaped had gone on into China. If this was true, and if the Jap was right in saying that three U.S. aircraft carriers had launched them in Japanese waters, then the U.S. had pulled a coup indeed. B-25s (built for the Army) might be able to take off from carrier decks. They could not return -- but they would be welcome indeed in China.

Whether major damage to industrial targets had been done was a matter of lesser importance. The big thing was that now the Jap knew, as London and Chungking knew, that the war was at home. And unlike the Chinese and the British, people of Japan were apparently unprepared for the discovery.

Japanese Weakness. Striking a half hour after noon, the bombers ripped into Tokyo from the northeast, and the measure of the soft spot they struck was the proof the Jap gave that they were U.S. craft. They were low enough, he said, for people on the streets to see the flaunting U.S. wing insignia -- a white star with a red center, on a field of blue. Anti-aircraft was either weak or its gunners were asleep, to let the raiders get that low.

As they had struck Tokyo, the bombers also struck Yokohama. Then they plunged inland, instead of heading out to sea, swung west over one of the most thickly populated areas in the world. If the Jap's aircraft detection was working, he must have known where they were headed-the industrial centers to the west. Again his defense was weak.

Two hours later the raiders struck at the Mitsubishi and Aichi plane plants in Nagoya, at the shipyards and foundries of Kobe. They had covered 275 miles since the first blow. When they had finished their mission there, they whipped away again.

To the United Nations, on the defensive against the Jap from Corregidor to Calcutta, the raid meant vastly more than a blow to the arrogance of a pitiless bully. It was evidence all the world could see that Japan itself is not adequately defended. With smart generalship the Jap had used nearly all his limited Air Force on the offensive-- but when, as in this case, the offensive is turned against him, he has to pay the price for his successes.

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