‘Utterly foolish’: 12 hours before World War II ended, the US firebombed this Japanese city

News Snapshot:

By Brad Lendon and Miki Lendon, CNN Kumagaya, Japan (CNN) — Eighty years later, the scars of the last American firebombing of a Japanese city remain — on the skin of a man who still lives mere yards from where hundreds died, on the surface of a statue of a revered Buddhist monk, and in the minds of those whose city was turned to ash in a matter of hours. Almost 90 US B-29 bombers dropped about 6,000 tons of jellied gasoline — napalm — on Kumagaya, Japan, on the night of August 14-15, 1945. The resulting fires, burning at...