All right. Another episode of looking through his library. Aren’t you excited? Oops. There we go. All right. What do we got here? Uh-huh (affirmative). The Conception of Strategic Bombing. What? What is this? I’ve heard of Hiroshima, I’ve never heard of Guernica or Chongqing. Don’t even ask. This one. I know Hiroshima. That’s pretty easy to pronounce. And we’ve been learning about Hiroshima since, what? WWII?
All right. What has led the air raids upon Chongqing? 1931 to ’37. Whoa. I thought the war didn’t start until the ’40s. I could be wrong though. Indiscriminate bombings started in 1939. The new capitol in May. The middle-sized bombers takeoff. Where’s the Hiroshima? Yeah, the 101 strategic bombing. Bombings were put into practice. Indiscriminate bombings.
(silence). Wow. This is… The Zero Fighters… Yeah. There we go. The Zero Fighters. Those people are… I’m not going to say they’re crazy. They were very dedicated. Let’s just say that. I’m interested on reading the Zero Fighters. More and more middle sized attack planes were shot down to worry… Whatever. Requested to send Zero Fighters into air battle. Let’s see it. 324.
(silence). The Zero Fighters’ first appearance. All right. More and more, blah, blah, blah, blah. The summer of 1940. The carrier-based planes popularly known as the Zero Fighters made their first appearance in a battle scene. Since then, until Japan was defeated in the Pacific War, they were known as a representative arms of the Japanese Navy Air Force, which kept them active in the immense sky, overlooking the vast hemisphere from these islands.
It was August of the year that the Zero Fighters made their first appearance as the fighter planes to guard the middle-sized air raiders being engaged in the indiscriminate bombardments upon this city. (silence). Okay. The 200… So that’s interesting. So it’d be the 2,600th year, in 1940, was the 2,600th year, right? Of the first emperor of Japan, Jimmu.
Okay. Not really that interesting. Let’s kind of see. See if I find anything… Ah, ba, ba, ba, ba. Wait a minute, their birth of their perishing could be compared to the looking glass which was to reflect the climax and downfall of the Air Force [inaudible 00:03:50]. However, it was in the middle of unfolding history later on [inaudible 00:03:53] something.
I’m going to read more of this, but I’m trying to see if we can… Oh, look at this. Look at the bombs. On April that year, someone came back to China for the third time now, leaving 27 planes that the [inaudible 00:04:06] got first plane and first squadron. Each one was carrying a couple of 250 kilogram bombs and four 60 kilogram bombs on board.
Okay. So this is what… They’re just kind of explaining the story. I mean, it’s going to be a very interesting story when I kind of write it out, but trying to read it to you write now, probably not the most interesting. But it’s kind of going over the story of how they started using Zero bombers. Right, let’s see if there’s anything… Yeah, it’s just…
Okay, well look, they achieved a great success… Wow. Look at this. (silence). 27 planes of the first attack corps dropped 312 bombs, each of them weighed 16 kilograms, or 120 pounds give or take. The 77 planes of the second attack corps dropped 300… Goodness gracious.
(silence). So yeah. The Zeros were basically just to protect the bombers. That’s ridiculous. That’s lot of bombs. Look at this. On the 19th Chongqing, this city, was to have a total of 100 enemy planes to drop 400 bombs, causing 181 deaths, 121 houses in… Wow. That is a ridiculous amount.
Yeah, I’m going to, again, I’m going to have to read. The amount… Look at the Japanese military invasion into China. And it’s witnessed… Are we still on the same chapter? No. I don’t think so. Yeah. But we’re going to read this poem and then I’m going to let y’all go. And then I’ll be able to kind of give you a better… Are we in the same chapter? Well this is the start of the…
Look at that. A fuse to lead to Pearl Harbor. Wow, this is really interesting. I mean, I probably have to read a lot more. I don’t have that time to read the whole book. But we’ll go with the introduction to Zero Bombers. But here, I’ll leave you guys with this quote. “At night I leave.” Yeah, I don’t know why I did that. That’s stupid. I can’t pronounce those words. So you can read it yourself. But I’m going to badger it right now. I’m going to complete trash it. Not on purpose, on complete accident. I just can’t pronounce these words.
“At night I leave Quingxi for Sanxia. Even if I keeping of you, it doesn’t lead to your appearance. This leads me to leave for Yuzhou.” All right, well that was pretty terrible. I apologize. That was pretty much a waste of time. I didn’t even need to read that.
But anyways, this is pretty interesting if you like American war history, or just war history period. Because, look, this is not an American book at all, right? Let’s see, where was this made? It’s translated. So it’s all in Chinese and Japanese. From Tetsuo Maeda. Oh, I can’t pronounce none of this. In Japanese. So that’s going to give it even more of authenticity, because it’s not from the American’s perspective. It’s from the Japanese perspective, which is going to be really interesting.