I'm John Batchel with James Scott, the author of Black Snow, Curtis Lame, the firebombing of Tokyo,

and the Road to the Atomic Bomb.

The poorest sections of Tokyo are on fire in a firestorm that Tokyo has never seen before

and might never actually happen again.

This is a unique event in human history.

However, back in Guam, Curtis LeMay, who launched these 325 bombers,

and everyone on the Marianas and also back in Washington is waiting for results.

As James tells us, they expected up to 70% casualties.

James, you provide a human scene, LeMay can't sleep,

and he and a colleague go for a couple of Coca-Cola's from his Quonson hut.

They finally get word that there's light flack.

What is their first understanding of the raid and how it's going?

You know, and LeMay is sort of always kind of this figure, you know, this sort of reserved guy, you know, and he admits he couldn't sleep this mission.

And so he doesn't, he lingers in the operations center.

And then he's finally, he's just stressed out he

knows that one way or another his whole career is going to be defined by what happens on this

night either by disaster or success and so it's a lot riding on him and so he does he connects with

um with his uh the press official for the 21st bomber command, who's in there

kind of waiting to see what the results are so that he can release the stories that reporters

have put together until LeMay says, let me get you a Coke.

And so they jump in his car, head over to his tent, and they grab some cooks and they sit

there.

...