Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey Page B

we had a very good view of the bombing. As I said, the Americans had already destroyed anything which could have fired back at them, so now they owned the sky. Some of their aircraft were fitted with powerful searchlights so they could illuminate their targets. The scene looked very frightening, but it was exciting too.
“My parents didn’t know where I was and they were worried, but then they heard us shouting, Look , there’s another one! Look at that! It took them a long time to understand that we were on the roof. Then they got really angry. You see, the Americans had low-flying fighters and if they’d seen us they’d have strafed us. Naturally, I got a hiding.
“Officially, one hundred twenty thousand people died in that raid, but there were really a million victims if you count everyone who lost a home or was injured or orphaned. You were in New York, Charley, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center. Three thousand people died, and that was an enormous number. You know what that was like, so now imagine what one hundred twenty thousand is like.
“The next day we saw the first of the people fleeing from downtown. But the traffic went both ways. People from Yamanote went to Shitamachi with food and blankets. We had downtown friends who came to live with us. Still, all our friends who survived were also victims, because they had lost a parent, or both parents, or a brother or sister, and if they wanted to go back to downtown they often couldn’t reach their destination. Shitamachi was burning and burning and burning.
“After this raid, my younger sister was evacuated to a city called Mito, northeast of Tokyo, where my mother’s mother lived.
“As for me, I was twelve and therefore was expected to work in an ordnance factory. I was sent to a place in Mikawa—on the Arakawa River, in Shitamachi— I guess you would call it a foundry They melted scrap iron and poured it into ingots and reused it for weapons, guns, bombs. So they’d bring in loads of scrap iron from the bombed buildings, and my job was to separate the iron from the less useful metals. Most of my day was spent carrying heavy metal from one place to another. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I made many mistakes.
“There were a number of home-guard soldiers who supervised the work and decided on punishments. You have to remember that it was an age of militarism, so if you made a little mistake you were punished immediately and severely.
“To be honest, I didn’t mind being hit. What was worse, they often punished everyone for one person’s error. For instance, everyone might have to go without a meal. They were hungry times anyway, and missing a dinner was very difficult. Sometimes they’d make everyone work another couple of hours, which was probably less cruel than it sounds now. We children had been brainwashed into thinking that we were ‘citizens-in-waiting,’ about to go out and fight for our country. So we were mentally prepared for this treatment.
“Then the factory was attacked.
“We heard the air-raid warning and rushed outside. We were used to seeing fighter planes. They always accompanied the bombers, but in this case there were only fighters. Though we thought the target was the factory, it was the workers they wanted. And as we ran across the rough ground to the riverbank, they already had us in their sights. They came in so low we could see the pilots’ faces as they strafed us. A few hours before I’d been eating with these boys and men, working and joking with them, but now my friends’ flesh was flying through the air, ripped apart by machine-gun bullets. Twenty of us escaped to the banks of the Arakawa. Seven of us died. This would have had a profound effect on a grown man, but on a twelve-year-old boy, I cannot describe the shock. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not discuss this anymore.
“I know that on the night of the big bombing raid on Shitamachi, my parents had been anxious that Yamanote would