The 70,000 soldiers (including my father) who served during WWII in the US Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) deserve more recognition than they generally receive. This photo and quotation from the 802nd Chemical Company (Air Operations) show their work supporting the B-29s flying out of Guam with the 314th Bomb Wing from March through August of 1945. While Ordnance units provided high-explosive bombs, CWS soldiers were responsible for incendiaries. They also stood ready to load toxic chemical bombs if the order had come from President Roosevelt or Truman.
The photo is from the National Archives, “Bombs Are Readied For Loading Onto the Boeing B-29 'Maximum Load' of the 314th Bomb Wing At North Field, Guam. 13 April 1945” (NAID: 204972544). The quote is from 1st Lt. Edgar H. Moorhead, preserved in the long-secret Organizational History Reports of the 802nd.
"During the now famous 10-day blitz on Japan in March, this organization worked a peak of 36 consecutive hours without a break. When I say this organization, I mean every man. One of the crews that turned out the most bombs for the big raid on Tokyo was a crew of cooks headed by Captain Eden T. Pray, the C.O. of the unit. On that particular night only two men were left in the Company Area and they were both crippled. Of the 130 EM and 4 officers, there were 128 EM and 4 officers swinging axes or loading bombs. With this sort of all-out effort, the 802nd Chemical Company is able to say that no plane was ever held back from a mission for want of the incendiary bombs we were handling.
“Later in March we were given aid from the 314th Wing Ammunition Section and from other organizations. No one was any more welcome for the needed help. About this same time we received cranes, more generators, and more axes and more storage space and always more and more bombs.
“The men were then no longer afraid of failing to get out a mission on time. They were then able to feel pride in what they had done alone. All they had done was to unload bombs, swing axes, and load bombs, but without that the raids on the Japanese Empire could not have been."