Cultural geographer Cary Karacas asked me to translate some poems about the air raids on Japanese cities during the Pacific War, so I did. Later I found one of the areas he is studying is the civilian experience of aerial bombing.
For my translation, Karacas lent me an anthology of "Great Air Raids: 310 Poets." I knew of its compiler and editor, Katsumoto Saotome. A survivor of the night of March 9, 1945, that struck Tokyo with the biggest firebombing ever, Saotome was distressed by Japan's well-nigh disregard for the raid in comparison with Hiroshima and Nagasaka, so he decided to do something about it.
After struggling for more than 30 years, he managed to found a museum to commemorate the calamity, the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. I mentioned him in these pages some years ago. ("Great Tokyo Air Raid was a war crime," Sept. 30, 2002.)
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