As viewed from America, credit for ending World War II in the Pacific regularly goes to the two atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6^th and 9^th, 1945. With justification, Russians are more likely to emphasize the importance of the Soviet Union as it declared war against Japan on August 8^th and began to flood 1.6 million troops into Japanese-occupied Manchuria. These and other events were certainly important, but neither did as much to degrade Japan’s will and ability to continue the war as did America’s 6-pound M69 incendiary bombs. The final use of these and other incendiary munitions came later in the war than most people realize. It was not until August 14—just one day before Emperor Hirohito publicly announced Japan’s unconditional surrender—that American B-29s conducted their last incendiary attacks.

Eighty years ago, on March 5, 1945, Lt. Col. Wyss from U.S. Chemical Warfare Headquarters in Calcutta visited Ondal Advanced Chemical Park in West Bengal, India. The purpose of his visit was to reassess the stockpile of toxic chemical bombs then being maintained at Ondal by the 771st Chemical Depot Company (Aviation). Immediately after Wyss’s visit, the soldiers of the 771st began a major project to dispose of tens of thousands of chemical bombs that were judged to be either unneeded or unusable.