WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
COSTLY BATTLES AVOIDED
NEW YORK, September 3. "If Japan had not been knocked out of the war by air power and atomic bombs, the ridges and valleys we saw in a Super-Fortress flight over. Honshu would have been the scene o£ the bloodiest and most costly battles in the Pacific," says a "New York Times" correspondent at Yokohama.
"Japan is criss-crossed by hundreds of streams and canals, most of which run through narrow valleys between deep, forbidding mountains or across narrow coastal fiats. The roads leading to key objectives are narrow and v/inding, and the entire island except for the coastal area is unsuitable for extensive use of tanks, recalling Okinawa.
"After oUr flight over bombed cities we concluded that the 20th Air Force assessed the damage conservatively. It is estimated that in some of the main cities over 2,000,000 people were left homeless or dead as a result of 14 raids. We saw few people moving in the streets." - y
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 7
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165WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 7
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