Three Kumamoto military bases attracted the attention of America’s B-29s in the closing days of the war: Kengun, Kitakumamoto, and the airport, which was then in Kikuchi. (Disclaimer: I’ve taught at all three.) When I tried to turn my elderly neighbor’s yard into a garden, I found it meters deep in roof tiles. Oe must have been an inferno then. Now is the anniversary of that hellish time. A monument exists alongside Shirakawa near Denshadori to remind us. - William