B-25 Mitchell nose art, courtesy of Planes of The Past. It’s relatively tame compared to some of the full frontal pix of the pre-PC era.
I’ve been reading Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, then-Army Captain Ted Lawson’s 1943 tale of the training, launching, bombing and aftermath of the April, 1942 retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The language is quaint (probably scrubbed for a general audience), except when he calls the Japs inhuman. But the description of them bayoneting hospital patients in their beds justifies it. And other books I’ve read about what their Navy did to downed American pilots, i.e. interrogating them and then throwing them overboard.
On the other hand, it’s easy to spot the propaganda in the official news release in the appendix—especially the claim that their bombs fell only on military targets. The Air Force can’t do that now. I know they couldn’t then. The so-called greatest generation was no less adept at lying than we are. Still it’s a good read, and a good look at the WW2 era. I recommend it.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 