The Last Day

There is a general consensus that the closing days of World War II went something like this:  On August 6, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.  After a couple of days of communications, Japan agreed to surrender terms on August 14, and the actual surrender document was signed on September 2, 1945, ending the war.

That chronology is correct, but it leaves out a significant number of important events that affected the surrender.  Both the Soviet Union and Mongolia declared war on Japan following the attack on Nagasaki, the Chinese Civil War resumed, Korea was invaded by Russia, the Allies had a resounding victory over the Japanese forces in the Philippines, and the United States dropped leaflets warning of future nuclear attacks on all the major Japanese cities—all of these events happened in the week following the bombing of Hiroshima.

One event that is missing from this list, which is rarely mentioned in history books (or in war documentaries, or in Hollywood movies), is the last bombing mission of the war, when over 1,000 American planes attacked cities across Japan.  The event is rarely mentioned for two reasons:  First, the bombing raid is relatively unimportant compared with the enormous consequences of the end of the war or the first use of nuclear weapons.  Second, many accounts of the last days of the war focus on the morality of using those nuclear weapons.  (An argument that I have no interest in reviving in a blog post of only 1,241 words.)

By November of 1944, the United States was able to begin devastating strategic bombing raids on Imperial Japan.  The production of thousands of long-range B-29 bombers (each capable of dropping up to ten tons of explosives), coupled with suitable runways built on the recaptured Marianas Island, meant that twice the monthly tonnage of bombs that had been dropped on Germany could now be dropped on Japan.

In addition, the bombing raids on Japan were more destructive because the United States had made improvements in the incendiary explosives that proved to be particularly effective on the type of construction used in Japanese cities.   The use of incendiary bombs on Tokyo in the spring of 1945 were so effective that the city was ruled out as a possible target for nuclear weapons—in part because the city had suffered so much devastation that it was feared that Japanese officials would not be able to appreciate the destructiveness of the atomic bomb. 

Nicknamed “firebombing”, incendiary raids on Japanese industry were far more effective than using conventional explosives owing to the Japanese custom of putting factories in densely populated areas of cities.  Realizing the effectiveness of this new tactic, American napalm production increased by 700% in 1944.  In the test of the new tactics, American bombers destroyed a square mile of the industrial area of Tokyo.

Click on the photo at left to enlarge it.  While at first glance, this looks like Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the nuclear attack, this is Shizuoka after it was firebombed in June, 1944.

A string of islands in the Marianas had been turned into bomber bases, each capable of launching 80 to 120 large bombers.  From the Marianas, the bombers flew 1,500 miles to Japan—the equivalent of taking off in Canada to bomb Mexico.  Along the way, as the bombers passed Iwo Jima, they were joined by fighter plane escorts of P-51 Mustangs outfitted with belly tanks to extend their range.  After dropping the bombs on their targets, the planes reversed course, landing back in the Marianas more than fifteen hours after they had taken off.  These were the longest bombing missions ever undertaken.

Most people are still surprised to learn that the single most deadly aerial bombing mission during World War II did not use nuclear weapons.  On March 9, 1945, 334 B-29 bombers based in the Marianas dropped 1,667 tons of napalm and petroleum jelly cluster bombs on Tokyo.  More than 100,000 people died, injuring several times that number and destroying 267,000 buildings.  This remains the highest death toll on any air raid in history, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The raid was roughly four times as destructive as the firebombing of Dresden, which had occurred a month earlier.

On August 10, the day after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese began preliminary surrender talks with the United States, generally agreeing to the terms previously laid out in the Potsdam Conference, but insisting on allowing Hirohito to keep his historical titles and powers—a rather large exception to the unconditional surrender demanded by the Allies. 

During this time, two smaller bombing raids were conducted by the Army Air Corps.  A night time raid was conducted against an oil target, and a precision daytime raid, on a factory in Tokyo.  The next day, all strategic bombing was canceled by President Truman, to encourage the Japanese to continue negotiations for surrender.  Truman also knew that if bombing continued, it might appear that the talks had stalled, resulting in a loss of morale in Americans who were already jubilant at the prospect of an end to the war.

On August 13, American bombers once more took to the air, but the payloads were leaflets that outlined the Japanese government’s conditional offer to surrender.  All major Japanese cities were targeted to receive the propaganda.  This was actually the third time in less than thirty days that leaflets had been dropped.  The first, on August 3, had been dropped by the millions on 33 cities (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) warning that America had the military power to utterly destroy Japanese cities.  Nicknamed the “Lemay Leaflets”, it pictured five B-29 bombers firebombing Yokohama.  On their second mission, following the bombing of Hiroshima, warning leaflets that included a photo of the mushroom cloud over that city were dropped, warning citizens of specific cities that they should evacuate these targets immediately. 

When the surrender negotiations had made no progress, the President allowed bombing to resume on August 14.  General Hap Arnold planned for the largest bombing mission in history—over a thousand planes to attack multiple Japanese cities at the same time.  There were 828 B-29’s escorted by 186 P-51 fighter planes, for a total of 1,014 aircraft, that attacked targets at Iwakuni, Osaka, Tokoyama, Kumagaya, and Isesaki (the last two targets were firebombed).  The farthest target, the Nippon Oil Refinery at Tsuchizakiminato, was destroyed. 

That last target is all but unpronounceable for Americans, so it is usually listed in history books as Tsuchizaki—or even more likely, Akita after a town five miles from the refinery.  Today, a memorial to the more than 250 civilians killed in the raid stands at Akita.

During the return flight of their fifteen-hour mission, the planes received a radio message informing them that after their successful attack, Japan had radioed an acceptance of Allied surrender terms.  At noon, the next day, August 15, Emperor Hirohito made a radio broadcast announcing his country’s intention to surrender.

The longest air raid (and the largest air raid of the war) is all but forgotten today, rarely mentioned in history books or listed in timelines of the war.  When the planes took off, the world was at war and by the time they all landed (and all returned safely), the world was—at least temporarily—at peace.

The Nom de Plume

John Singer Sargent, the American painter, was passionate about reading books.  He called reading multiple books by the same author, “reading in a wedge”. 

Like Sargent, I, too, am addicted to reading everything a favorite author has written, and then loudly lamenting about the lack of more books.  I confess to still being irrationally angry with John D. MacDonald for having died, leaving us with only 78 novels to enjoy.  (I’m not counting his short stories, since he wrote under so many different names that no one is sure how many he cranked out). 

According to magazine publishers, on more than one occasion, every story in an issue was actually written by MacDonald, but they were listed under his various pen names, such as Peter Reed, John Farrell (sometimes John Wade Farrell), Scott O'Hara, Robert Henry, Harry Reiser, or John Lane.

I spent a little time at Coas, my favorite local book store, trying to track down the various pseudonyms my favorite authors have used, since these frustrate my attempt to ‘read in a wedge’.  Thhh got me to thinking about some of the various strange pen names authors have employed.

Benjamin Franklin used a lot of pen names over the years, frequently to remain anonymous wphile writing about political topics.  His first pseudonym however, was used just to get in print.  Suspecting that his youth was the reason he failed to have any of his letters published by the local newspaper, Franklin started submitting letters as Silence Dogood, an elderly woman.  As Franklin had suspected, his letter was accepted and published by the New England Courant.

Altogether, Ms. Dogood published 14 such letters, and Franklin was addicted both to writing and inventing pen names, such as Anthony Afterwit, Alice Addertongue, Polly Baker, Harry Meanwell, Caelia Shortface, Martha Careful, Busy Body, and Benevolus.  Strangely, his most successful pen name resulted in a book that everyone is familiar with, but almost no one remembers who wrote it .  Poor Richard’s Almanac was penned under the name of Richard Saunders.

There is a great story about a young student named Ted, who was the editor of a college magazine.  After he threw a wild drunken party that violated both the school’s policy and Federal prohibition laws, Dartmouth University fired him.  Undeterred, he continued to submit satirical pieces signing them with only his middle name.  Ted’s father wanted him to give up writing and go to medical school, so when his first book was published, Ted added the title “Dr.” to his name, and Dr. Seuss became internationally famous.  (By the way, he pronounced it, “Soice”.)

There are plenty of female authors who have taken a male pseudonym to avoid the very real prejudice against female authors in the publishing world.  George Elliot is really Mary Anne Evans.  The three Brontë sisters all originally published with male ‘noms de plume’.  Even J. K. Rowling used initials instead of her first name, Joanne.  Since she has no middle name, the “K is for her grandmother, Kathleen.

Occasionally, the reverse has been true—there are a few male authors who took female names in order to sell books.  British crime novelist Martin Waites began publishing as Tania Carver after his publisher told him they were looking for female author that could write thrillers. “I could do that,” Waites told his publisher.  And he was right, the result was The Surrogate, an excellent book.  Waites continues to write under both names and says they have become two different people in his head.  Now that his wife has started to help him write the stories, I guess they have become two different people in two heads.

Perhaps one of the strangest stories of a man publishing under a woman’s name is that of US Navy Captain Walter Karig.  Writing under at least four pen names, Karig wrote manuals for the Navy artillery, scripts for the television series Victory at Sea, and several novels.  Shortly before his death, he also admitted to having written three of the Nancy Drew novels under the name Carolyn Keene.  (He also wrote a great science fiction novel, Zotz!, that I own.   The story is one that I cannot get out of my mind, and is slowly driving me mad.  Wonderful book, but don’t watch the dreadful movie with the same name.)

A few pen names have been created for commercial reasons.  Stephen King, who probably wrote two novels during the time it took me to write these 1761 words, can’t stop writing.  When his publisher warned him that writing too many books under one name might swamp the market, King started publishing his “extra” novels under the name Richard Bachmann.  When his secret identity inevitably became public knowledge, King announced that Bachman had died from “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.”

There are practical reasons to adopt, or even change a pen name.  Though Kenneth Millar published in first four novels under his own name, after his writing career was interrupted by World War II, he chose the pen name John Ross MacDonald because his wife, Margaret Millar, had established her own writing career.  After a few years, Millar changed his pen name to Ross MacDonald to avoid being confused with John D. MacDonald.  Neither writer should be confused with the excellent mystery writer, Gregory McDonald.  For a few decades, if the author was named MacDonald—no matter how it was spelled—you bought the book.

At least one pen name was adopted for national security reasons.  David John Moore Cornwell wrote a great spy novel, but couldn’t publish it under his own name for the simple reason that he was a real-life spy!  His day job was with MI5, so when Call for the Dead was published, it was under the name John le Carré. 

Some pen names defy all attempts at understanding.  When William Sydney Porter was imprisoned at the Ohio State Penitentiary for embezzling funds while working at an Austin bank, he took up writing short stories under the name of O. Henry to pass the time.  Who was the inspiration for this choice?  Porter never explained, but one of his prison guards was named Orrin Henry.

As I have said in many previous posts, one of my favorite authors is Robert Heinlein.  Some of Heinlein’s most famous stories were written under the name Anson MacDonald, but Heinlein used his own name when the books were reprinted.  Heinlein often alluded to having written romance stories during the Depression just to keep food on the table.  While I worked for Bantam Books during the seventies, I frequently pressured the famous publisher. Ian Ballantine, a personal friend of Heinlein, to reveal those names, but Ian always refused with a smile.  I still don’t know what name he used for his love stories, but I can tell you four other pseudonyms Heinlein used to publish fiction:  Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, and Simon York.  I have no idea where the names came from.

Almost as prolific a writer as Stephen King, Harlan Ellison wrote under at least 10 different pen names.  Of all of his pseudonyms, the most famous was Cordwainer Bird.  (If you are interested, a cordwainer is one who makes shoes.  Contrary to popular thought, a cobbler does not make shoes, he repairs them.)  Ellison’s stories were frequently used by Hollywood, and when Ellison believed that various producers and directors had used his work and fornicated it skyward beyond all redemption, he branded it with the Cordwainer Bird moniker in the credits.  According to Stephen King, this was Ellison’s way of giving Hollywood the bird.  Ellison agreed. 

Note.  I will not say that Harlan Ellison wrote great science fiction, because he once said, “Call me a ‘science-fiction’ writer and I'll come to your house and nail your pet's head to the table.”  Yes, I know he died last year, but with Ellison, you just never know.  I will say that you need to read The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.  Holy Shit!  You’ll never drive a car the same way again.

No American author has had as much impact on the genre of mystery writing as Ellery Queen.  Author, editor, magazine publisher—Queen’s books have been endlessly reprinted and turned into countless radio plays, television shows and movies.  Obviously, Ellery Queen is a pen name or I wouldn’t have included him, but Ellery absolutely wins the prize for the most confusing chain of pseudonyms.

First off, Ellery Queen is both the author and the main character in most of his books.  The son of a New York police inspector, the Ellery Queen character is a writer of mystery novels, who helps his father solve crimes.  So, he is an author who solves mysteries as an author who writes mysteries.

To further confuse the matter, after Ellery became famous, he adopted his own pen name, Barnaby Ross, to write other mystery stories.  Eventually, after the identity of the real author became well known, those books were republished with Queen as the listed author.  Instead of retiring the name of Barnaby Ross, Queen licensed other authors to write under the fictitious name, but those authors were not allowed to use Ellery as a character in their books.

By the late 1940’s, a series of mysteries designed for children and published under the name Ellery Queen, Jr. hit the bookstores.  These stories were written by several different ghostwriters under contract to Ellery Queen, with each following a plot and a strict outline laid out by Queen.  To further complicate matters, at least one of the ghostwriters hired sub-ghostwriters to actually pen the works.  At this point, you are probably thinking that no one knows who actually wrote what, but wait—it gets worse!

Ellery Queen was actually the pen name of two cousins who formed a 42-year writing partnership:  Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee.  I wish I could stop the story now, but those were actually the professional names of Daniel Nathan and Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky.  If you are wondering why two pen names needed a pen name….I can’t help you.

So, let’s sum up:  Nathan and Lepofsky, writing under the “professional” names of Dannay and Lee, wrote books under the shared pen name of Ellery Queen (who was an author who occasionally wrote as Barnaby Ross, but not about himself, sometimes) and in the books, Ellery Queen wrote mystery stories in which he (Ellery Queen) solved murders.

And if you understood that last paragraph, how you did it is a mystery to me.