Chopping the Roots

The first big city captured in World War II had been almost forgotten. But last week the U.S. Seventh Air Force brought Shanghai back into the headlines with a sudden crash.

In the first full-scale raid ever made against the city, more than 200 Okinawa-based Liberators, Mitchells and Thunderbolts strafed and bombed Shanghai's harbor and airfields. No. 1 target, hit with 300 tons of explosives, was Kiangwan airdrome, containing 15 major hangars, four concrete bomber runways, and the biggest concentration of Jap planes in China. Next day the planes went back again. On neither trip were the Americans challenged by fighter opposition.

Douglas MacArthur's announcement that this was just the beginning of full-scale attacks on the city gave the Japs a bad case of jitters. Shanghai is the main port through which they keep their continental armies supplied. To bomb Shanghai was to cut at the very roots of the Jap position in Asia.

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