Word: strafe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Japanese Lieut. Fusata Iida turned to strafe Sands, but the sailor fired another BAR clip, then ducked the bullets that pocked the armory's wall. As Iida's Zero climbed again, gasoline began streaming from his fuel tank. Before takeoff, Iida had said that any pilot whose engine failed should crash his plane into the enemy, so now he turned for a last attack. For one incredible minute, the two enemies faced and fired at each other, Iida from his crippled Zero, Sands with his BAR. Then the Zero nosed into a highway and smashed into pieces...
Though the damage was not great -- about 50 civilians killed and 90 buildings wrecked -- the demonstration of vulnerability infuriated the Japanese. ENEMY DEVILS STRAFE SCHOOL YARD, cried a headline in the Asahi Shimbun, which excoriated the "inhuman, insatiable, indiscriminate bombing." Several of the eight captured airmen were tortured to tell where they had come from, and three were executed by firing squad. Worse, the Japanese army tried to punish all Chinese who might have helped the downed pilots, and the slaughter in Chekiang and Kiangsu provinces took a toll estimated at more than 200,000. As often happened in this...