From a ship at anchor in a Japanese port,

Nov. 19, 1945

We go in to a little summer resort town which is very pretty to do our shopping. It is a suburb of and about two miles from the city of Wakayama, which used to have about as many people as Spokane before it was bombed. Only one B-29 raid was made on this city, but it practically wiped out the town. Acres and acres are completely flat and look like a junk heap. Several hundred B-29s dropped incendiary bombs here on July 9 for about two hours and that was the end of the city.

… The Japanese seem very friendly and seem happy but things are pretty tough for them. I was waiting for my boat a couple of weeks ago as it started to rain. An old man left his family and came over with an umbrella to hold over me.

(Jim Elsensohn died in Spokane in 2004).