ABSTRACT
A sign that the war was finally reaching the homes, fields, schools, and factories of Oita Prefecture came on January 1, 1945, though most people did not notice it at the time. On that day, the first American B-29 bomber flew high over the city of Oita. Only a handful of residents noticed the plane, as it left nothing but a streak of white mist in its path. No alarms went off and the newspapers did not report it the next day. An American reconnaissance plane, surveying the land below and mapping future bombing sites, came and went quietly. But for those who understood what they were seeing, a new and unsettling feeling emerged for the first time since the war began.
