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On January 27, 1945, seventy-two B-29s were diverted from their primary targets by cloudy weather. They dropped their payloads on the heart of downtown Tokyo, and bombs fell among Saturday shoppers in the tony Ginza district, killing several hundred. For urbanites who witnessed such scenes of devastation, the regime’s appeals to “fighting spirit” inspired bitter sarcasm. In his diary, Kiyoshi Kiyosawa commented that “the Japanese spirit encourages the idea that when one sees B-29s, they can be dealt with [by] bamboo spears or judo.”
