quote:

THE 16 BOMBERS ROARED OFF the Hornet’s deck on the morning of April 18, 1942. All bombed targets but one, whose pilot had to ditch his ordnance in the sea to outrun fighters. According to materials only lately brought to light, the raid obliterated 112 buildings and damaged 53, killing 87 men, women, and children. Among 151 civilians seriously injured, one was a woman shot through the face and thigh while gathering shellfish near Nagoya. At least 311 others suffered minor injuries.

In Tokyo, the raiders burned the Communication Ministry transformer station, as well as more than 50 buildings around the Asahi Electrical Manufacturing Corporation factory and 13 adjoining the National Hemp and Dressing Company. In Kanagawa Prefecture, just south of Tokyo, raiders targeted foundries, factories, and warehouses of the Japanese Steel Corporation and Showa Electric as well as the Yokosuka Naval Base. Robert Bourgeois, bombardier of the 13th plane, which attacked Yokosuka, later commented on the intensity of his preparation. “I had looked at the pictures on board the carrier so much that I knew where every shop was located at this naval base,” he recalled. “It was as if it were my own backyard.”

In Saitama Prefecture, to the north, bombardiers blasted Japan Diesel Corporation Manufacturing. At Nagoya, a massive Toho Gas Company storage tank burned completely. Bombs there also damaged a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries aircraft factory. Six wards of the army hospital went up in flames, along with a food warehouse and army arsenal.

The Japanese logged the results of the war’s first raid on their homeland in minute detail, records that largely survived the 1945 bombardment of Tokyo and the deliberate destruction of records that preceded Japan’s surrender. Pilot Edgar McElroy’s attack on the Yokosuka Naval Base ripped a 26-by-50-foot hole in submarine tender Taigei’s port side, delaying its conversion to an aircraft carrier for four months. One of pilot Harold Watson’s 500-pound demolition bombs penetrated a warehouse filled with gasoline, heavy oil, and volatile methyl chloride, only to bounce into the neighboring wooden building before exploding. Bombs left craters 10 feet deep and 30 feet across. A dud ripped through a house to bury itself in the clay beneath, forcing the military to set a 650-foot perimeter to excavate the projectile.

As Doolittle anticipated, the attack burned residences from Tokyo to Kobe. In 2003 Japanese historians Takehiko Shibata and Katsuhiro Hara revealed that pilot Travis Hoover alone destroyed 52 homes and damaged 14. One bomb blew a woman from the second floor of her house to land unhurt in the street atop a mat. In the same neighborhood 10 civilians died, some burning to death in collapsing houses. Pilots Hoover, Robert Gray, David Jones, and Richard Joyce accounted for 75 of the 87 fatalities. Jones’s attack claimed the most lives—27.

Gray strafed what he thought was a factory, complete with a rooftop air defense surveillance tower. But it was Mizumoto Primary School, where students, like many across Japan, attended half-day classes on Saturdays. After school let out at 11 a.m, many students had stayed to help clean classrooms; one died in the strafing attack. At Waseda Middle School, one of Doolittle’s incendiaries killed fourth-grader Shigeru Kojima. Children’s deaths became a rallying point. A Japanese sergeant later captured by Allied forces described the furor that erupted from the raid. “One father wrote to a leading daily telling of the killing of his child in the bombing of the primary school,” his interrogation report stated. “He deplored the dastardly act and avowed his intention of avenging the child’s death by joining the army and dying a glorious death.”

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

It’s the point where the thing where everyone collectively confused cloud with a brooding antihero got cannonized. He’s a doofus goofball in the game but everyone just arbitrarily decided he was cool and dark and advent children made him that.

Macaluso posted:

Grave of the Fireflies is the movie with the big sequence of the bomb going off where they have shots of people's faces and eyeballs melting off right

SolarFire2 posted:

I have never cried like I cried when I finished that book in third grade. I finished it on a Saturday morning and I was completely inconsolable all weekend.

Pick posted:

I assumed it was cancelled! I love this style.

Digamma-F-Wau posted:

yeah nope, it just sitting in CN's vault for a while before they dusted it off. It was meant to come out last year (we haven't even gotten any eps copyright 2020 yet), and one of the directors on a few early episodes moved onto Mao Mao, and his first Mao Mao eps aired back in september

Acebuckeye13 posted:

This is the Doolittle Raid: Source


This, on the other hand, from Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Franks, was Tokyo:

(Don't read if you don't want to ruin your Sunday morning)



This, or something like this, happened to nearly every Japanese city. Tokyo wasn't even the worst hit, as this helpful chart explains. See if you can find your hometown!



The reason Grave of the Fireflies takes place in Kobe is because the story is semi-autobiographical. The author of the original short story that the film was based on grew up in Kobe, and based the story on his experiences in the aftermath (Including the death of his sister from malnutrition). And while the story is, in part, intended for children (though 'child' here is probably better defined as 'pre-teens and teenagers'), it's to help them understand the very real events that their parents and grandparents lived through.

hallelujah posted:

i would like an edgy dolittle wherein the doctor incites the animals to kill

quote:

Robert Bourgeois, bombardier of the 13th plane

Robindaybird posted:

My 4th grade teacher read us the book when we finished our work early (kind of childish even for 4th grade, but he had a very good audio reading voice and picked interesting books), I think half the class yelled 'drat you' at him, and he didn't even try to scold us for swearing at him.

Pick posted:

Holes.

Pick posted:

Digamma-F-Wau posted:

"jokes on you I worked on both"

BioEnchanted posted:

BTW has Mao Mao been cancelled or is it still going? It's last episode was in December. It just seems to be releasing very sparsely.

Digamma-F-Wau posted:

I remember some people were going "Thundercats Roar sucks despite being made by professionals while Hazbin Hotel is great and was made by independent artists" and one of the boarders on Roar replied with something along the lines of "jokes on you I worked on both"

Pick posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3VTBJYfivg

Pick posted:

Now that someone gave me the heads-up it was out, congrats 'cause thundercats roawr is my favorite tv cartoon of the last... mmm probably three years, easily

The animation is incredibly loving great, honestly sort of blows my mind how good a lot of the action sequences are.

flashy_mcflash posted:

how to make/acquire a Cheetara costume that would be in any way appropriate for a seven year old to wear.