19. A Plan to Set Japan on Fire With Bats
When Pennsylvania dentist Lytle S. Adams first heard of the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, he was mad as hell, like most Americans. Like many of his countrymen, he fantasized about payback. He began to think about what was then commonly known about Japanese cities: that most of their houses were flimsy wooden constructs. Wouldn’t it be grand, he reasoned, if somebody could take advantage of that? That idea in of itself was neither revolutionary nor original. It was common knowledge that the Japanese usually built their houses out of bamboo and paper. In 1923, fires swept through Tokyo after a massive earthquake, and hundreds of thousands perished and were wounded.
So the vulnerability of Japanese cities to flames was well known. What set Adams apart was the creative plan he thought up to ignite such fires: via bats. Adams had recently returned from a trip to New Mexico, where he was impressed by the clouds of migratory bats that visited the state each year, to roost by the million in Carlsbad Caverns. He was particularly impressed by the Mexican Free-Tailed Bats – a smaller but hardier species than common bats. So the dentist, who apparently had as much free time as he had initiative, returned to Carlsbad, and captured some bats to study.
