BEFORE OPPENHEIMER'S GADGET: 6/8: Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 30 July 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
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BEFORE OPPENHEIMER'S GADGET: 6/8: Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Snow-Curtis-Firebombing-Atomic/dp/1324002999/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1X64JYW3Z1OT9&keywords=BLACK+SNOW+JAMES+SCOTT&qid=1674137497&s=books&sprefix=black+snow+james+scott%2Cstripbooks%2C61&sr=1-1
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Clicking collectors now available at Selected London Primark stores for kids, baby and nursery products. |
| 0:07.0 | Visit Primark.com today to find your nearest participating store. |
| 0:11.0 | So, what are you waiting for? |
| 0:13.0 | Go to Primark.com and shop Primark clicking collect today. |
| 0:17.0 | Little prices, big smiles. |
| 0:22.0 | I'm John Bashler with James Scott. |
| 0:24.0 | James Scott is no book as black snow Curtis Lemay, the fire bombing of Tokyo and the road to the atomic bomb. |
| 0:29.0 | Round midnight, March 9th, 10th, 1945. |
| 0:35.0 | The poorest parts of Japan are asleep. |
| 0:39.0 | Families are huddled together day at one point James gives us pictures of family sleeping five across five people on the second floor of the first floor of their very modest paper. |
| 0:51.0 | And would build homes all crowded together. |
| 0:55.0 | James, you introduce us to survivors who tell the story. |
| 0:59.0 | One particular survivor is compelling because she's looking forward to her six birthday. |
| 1:06.0 | Shizuko Nishio, when did she first learn that the bombers were something different? |
| 1:12.0 | We're not coming tonight and then we're something different. |
| 1:15.0 | So yes, she goes to bed that night and she's super excited. |
| 1:19.0 | And her father, she lives in the district that's being targeted. |
| 1:22.0 | Her father's a physician who treats a lot of the it's kind of a working class district treats a lot of the folks there. |
| 1:29.0 | There's huge shortages in Japan at this point because the American submarine effort has really robbed the ability of Japan to import things. |
| 1:36.0 | And so she's super excited for her birthday because her mother has been able to sort of cobble together enough stuff to make sort of a birthday feast for her. |
| 1:44.0 | She's been that that night super excited to wake up the next morning and like so many others in Tokyo, of course. |
| 1:51.0 | A little past midnight when the raid begins her father comes in and says you got to get up and so they go into the family bomb shelter and. |
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