At the age of thirty-six, LeMay became the youngest general in the Army. During the summer of 1944, he was transferred from Europe to help fight Japan. Although incendiaries had been used on a small scale, it was LeMay who ordered the firebombing of Tokyo. “Japan would burn if we could get fire on it,” one of his deputies explained.
"The Japanese are devilish, crafty and flammable," he explained. "Also, they don't feel pain the way we do."
-- Life Magazine, September, 1944.
