Hitting Japanese steel mills aboard a B-29 bomber

An Army Air Forces sergeant from Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood had a high-altitude view of the U.S. attack on Japanese steel mills 75 years ago this weekend.

“If I said I was not scared, I would be a liar,” 21-yearold Morris Kramer said then. “But I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” Kramer was a gunner on what was then one of the Allies’ newest weapons: a four-engine B-29 Superfortress.

Also aboard the plane on its bombing run over Yawata, Japan, was Associated Press reporter Thoburn Wiant. Wiant provided an “Eyewitness Story” for readers of the Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph on June 16, 1944.

“We are only 10 minutes from Yawata, the Pittsburgh of Japan,” Wiant wrote. The plane on which he and Kramer were flying was one of several dozen Superfortresses whose targets were the steel mill and coke works. “If ever there was a juicy target, this is it,” Col. Leonard “Jake” Harmon told the air crews before they took off.

Following military censorship rules, Wiant did not describe the route of the mission. He did write, however, that the mission would be a historic one. “By the time we return, we will have established a world’s record for long-distance bombing.”

After the war, it was revealed that the B-29s had taken off from air bases around Chengdu, China, and had traveled about 1,800 miles to their target in Japan and then returned.

The B-29 raid also was noteworthy because it marked the first time Allied forces had been able to attack the Japanese home islands since the raid on Tokyo led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle in April 1942. “This is no propaganda raid, otherwise we would hit Tokyo again,” Wiant said of the B-29 attack. “This marks the beginning of a military plan to hit the [Japanese] again and again where it hurts the most.” Wiant and Sgt. Kramer both used a word that is now considered a derogatory term for citizens of Japan.

“Japan’s vital steel works is being reduced to a huge rubbish heap by America’s biggest, fastest and deadliest bombers,” Wiant reported.

The Doolittle attack did little physical damage to Tokyo, but it provided a major morale boost for Allies, coming just four months after the devastating Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor. Similarly, the June 15 raid on the Yawata steel mills caused minor harm to the complex, but it marked the opening of an air war that ultimately would devastate Japanese industry and population centers.

“The [Japanese] have not felt anything yet,” Sgt. Kramer told Wiant. “Wait until we start throwing the haymakers.”