I'm John Batchel with James Scott, the author of Black Snow, Curtis Lamey, 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 hunt. 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 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.

And LeMay is just totally distracted. he's rattling off about what his experience

was like in india and everything he's doing everything you can to distract him and to kill time

till they get back to the operations hut and then the first reports start coming in that there's no

flag there's not much fighter opposition that essentially the planes have gotten in and gotten

their bombs on target.

And he feels that first sense of relief then because all the expectation that they would

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