Fire Flowers by Ben Byrne Page A

visited half of the country already, though he said he’d spent most of the war in China.
    â€œI was based in Chengtu for a spell myself,” I ventured.
    He examined me, sizing me up. “Well, perhaps we’re kindred spirits, then, Lynch.”
    He took a flask of whisky from his kit bag and handed it over. I swallowed a glug with relish and he nodded for me to take another.
    â€œWell, that’s my sheet. How do you find yourself here, Lynch? You must have seen action, I suppose.”
    â€œWell, sure,” I shrugged. “Where should I start?”
    The train gave a loud shudder as the wheels shuttled on the rails. He glanced outside, the dusk gathering now in the paddies.
    â€œWe have plenty of time.”
    As I told him about my war, the sound of snoring drifted from the next compartment. With vague resentment, I realized that Eugene hadn’t once asked me about my service in all the time we’d been back together. Ward’s manner was avuncular and invited confidences. As the train shunted toward Tokyo, he offered me more whisky from his flask and I recalled to him days and nights hunched over the viewfinders in the belly of
Flashing Jenny
, mapping out the country piece by piece.
    â€œYou drew up targets for the Super Fortresses?”
    â€œEyes of the 21st Bomber Command.”
    That previous September. Arriving at the Isley Field air- strip on Saipan, fresh and bright in our gleaming new photo-converted Superfort, straight off the line. Bombs out, cameras in. At our first briefing, General Curtis LeMay, then head of strategic air operations, informed us that the best map we had of Japan was from
National Geographic
. Our job was to remedy the situation. All through fall, we flew dozens of missions, debriefing LeMay in his Quonset every day at thirteen hundred, pointing out the spillways of the naval yards; the carriers and cruisers; the munitions factories turning out aircraft engines and locomotives, heavy guns and rolling stock.
    At dawn, one by one, the silver dream-boats floated off from the runways. Dipping with the weight in their bomb bays, they ascended, fuselages dazzling bright in the first rays of sun. After dark, the ground crewmen sweated it out on the airstrip, puffing cigarettes, gazing fretfully at their watches and up at the sky, until the low drone of motors sounded far away and finally the powerful landing lights lit up the runway and the first returning planes touched precisely down.
    In January, we were relocated from Saipan to Harmon Field at Guam to be closer to LeMay. Operations staff were no longer interested in industrial targets. Instead, we were told to identify the most densely packed residential areas in each Japanese city, and to grade them according to the most inflammable areas.
    â€œThe fire raids?” Ward asked.
    My scalp prickled. My map of Tokyo hung on the wall of the Quonset two weeks later, the wards marked in varying shades of grey according to their population. By then we had fire jelly and white phosphorus that would stick to skin, paper or wood and burn like hell until everything was gone. To the west of Tokyo, the new suburbs were blank white. To the east, the old wards, Fukagawa and Asakusa, were shaded jet black.
    â€œThe Tokyo Raid,” I said. “Lord God. You could see the flames from two hundred miles away.”
    Pillars of smoke rising to 18,000 feet. A sheer of heat, the sky blasting bright outside the windows of the plane. My hand pulling hard on the camera crank, over and over again.
    â€œNext week, Nagoya,” I said. “Osaka. Kobe. We were going to burn the whole damn country to the ground.”
    By July we were running out of places to bomb. My face in the mirror was twitchy, my body listless and unkempt. My CO ordered me to take a week’s leave, which I spent swimming around the reef at Tumon Bay, trying to shake my throbbing headaches and chronic dysentery, convinced that a stink of soot and