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Commanding General, Fifth Air Force, made the first landing on the first American built concrete runway in Japan at Irumagawa. He landed his silver B-17 Flying Fortress at 2:00 pm, 25 February and in an impressive ceremony, renamed the base Johnson Field.) The Engineers had dug a huge trench out by a runway. Dozens of Japanese airplanes were pushed into the trench and gasoline was poured on them. We all stood back by our hangar and watched as one guy ignited a torch and threw it toward the trench. The torch went only a short distance before it hit the gasoline fumes. Everything went up in one big WHOOM! The torch thrower was running toward us when it exploded. I had never seen a guy fly so far without wings. Fortunately he wasn't seriously hurt.

The mess hall was like bivouac - very crude, but the food was not bad - just average Army fare. When we finished eating we went outdoors to clean our trays. First we dumped the garbage into a 55 gallon drum. The next three drums were filled with boiling water: the first was to rinse the food off, the second had soapy water, and the third was the final rinse. When we were finished the cups and trays were stacked. Usually when you picked up a tray to eat it was still wet and greasy. But let me tell you about the garbage drum. Many shabbily dressed Japanese men with filthy dirty greasy burlap sacks were begging for our leftovers. They would take what little they could get home to feed their families. Some of our guys acted like we were still at war - they would cuss the "Japs" out, jerk their trays away, and slam the leftovers into the garbage drum whereupon the scavengers would reach into the drum with their grubby hands to dip the sloppy mess out. To me the selfishness of some of our Americans was sickening. How could anyone be angry at such desperate people? I was so emotionally moved by their hopelessness that I intentionally left some of my food for them - a slice of bread with butter on it, lots of meat on the bones, mashed potatoes, etc.. I wished that I could have done more.

In October and November some of the men who had been down in the island bases moved into Japan to prepare bases for our shipload of troops and many others to come. We were their replacements and each day some of our group left to fill those positions. All but three of my friends were gone. It was just a couple days before New Year's Day when the rest of us left for Fukuoka, the fifth largest city in Japan, on Kyushu, the southernmost island.

We were riding on a 42" gauge track civilian train with sparse accommodations and most of the passengers were Japanese. They were cordial, polite, pleasant, and interesting. Many of them spoke some English and it was just enough to communicate. All along the way we found the people to be inquisitive and at least somewhat friendly until we came to one city - Hiroshima.

Hiroshima (Hiro meaning wide and Shima meaning island) had a pre-1945 population of 400,000 but had been reduced to 350,000 by

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