An hour later, the bomber begins to vibrate and jerk. Despite its vast weight and size, it suddenly pitches like a western bronco. Jackson grins mirthlessly and fondles his cold cigar. He once flew similar missions, and knows what the weather's like between the Marianas and the Jap home islands. Flight Engineer Prideaux explains that we are encountering a turbulent frontal condition. Nothing to worry about, folks. But Doran is pasty-faced be hind his acne. Airsick, maybe. His fiancée relaxes a little. Only Taves remains impervious to the environment.

I make my way forward to talk with Colonel Bong and his co-pilot, Colonel Estenssoro. The view through the Plexiglas nose is impressive. Massive cloud towers shatter around us. Then the view is abruptly gone. For long minutes we are blind, flying within a cold envelope of vapor. Our only light is the green glow from the control panel. Faces look eerie, sallow, especially Bong's. For a moment I think of those who flew the first B-29s against, Japan. Not all of them returned. Are Bong and Estenssoro two such spooks, flying an insubstantial aircraft against an enemy now mostly dead?

I like the idea. It might make a good lead-in for the story. But I know these men just in front of me are both flesh and blood, and the ship around them hard, firm steel.

"Enjoying the flight?" asks Bong, in that strange, icy voice that fits him so well.

"There's a better view up here," I reply.

"Sometimes." Bong indicates the opaque vapors sliding around the Plexiglas nose. The grin on his burnscarred face causes me to have second thoughts about spooks and haunted aircraft.

Bong is a rare bird, Americanis mercinarius, while Estenssoro is strictly Bolivanius militarius. The other crew members, while less impressive specimens, belong to one or the other of the same species.

"I'm kinda surprised anyone cares about the war," says Bong. Without bothering to look he touches a switch, sensing its location with a clawlike hand.

I shrug. "Long as the war lasts, there'll be interest."

"Some war, uh?" laughs Estenssoro, wrinkles forming at the corners of his black Incan eyes. "Been months since I even saw a Jap."

"Probably aren't many left," observes Bong.

I agree.

Later, I catch some sleep. When I wake, I'm stiff and achy. A Superfortress is no place to nap, I decide, especially if you've spent most of the three previous nights talking and drinking like a fish -- and ostensibly interviewing -- at the Saipan Officers Club.

I yawn, stretch as best I can in the cramped space I share with Mae Wests, canteens, parachutes, and other survival gear. I look at the watch my wife gave me last Christmas. The Bulova tells me a couple of hours have passed, but I don't feel like I've slept that long. At least the weather is better. The ride is almost silk smooth now. Really nice, I tell Prideaux. Knock on wood, he warns; good weather rarely lasts in these parts.

I'm up front again when the sun and the land of the rising same first come into view. Honshu is just a grey smear on the horizon. To the east, dawn is a pink blush -- rosy-fingered, Homer would say -- but yellow fire is fast spilling up over the earth's rim, washing the sky with a stark blue morning. It'll be a good day for a bomb run, Bong says. I clamber tack and tell Ernie to get his cameras ready.

The coast crawls toward us, backed by stale brown hills and purple mountains. We're still too far away to see the cities and towns. Or even evidence of the vast destruction. But Jackson and Doran crowd to the view-ports anyway.

Tokyo Bay swims turquoise beneath us, a jewel of exquisite beauty in a setting tarnished almost beyond recognition. Tokyo is a ruin, a moonscape, burned out, barren, empty. We see no people and aren't surprised.

Eleven miles northwest of central Tokyo is San Antonio One's old target, the Nakajima Company, where thirty thousand machinists once produced thirty percent of Japan's aircraft engines. Ernie's cameras eat up a lot of film, but it seems a waste; there's nothing down there now but crumbling bucks and twisted girders.

Our B-29 drones in, describing an outward spiral. Everywhere it's the same -- Chiba, Fukushima, Yokohama, Iwate Prefecture -- all wastelands being slowly reclaimed by scabrous vegetation. And still no people.

"The Japs must be down there. They can't all be dead," Jackson growls around his unlit cigar. He clutches a pair of Sears-Roebuck binoculars in his hammy paws.

"Yeah,'' echoes Doran, sounding just as disappointed. He's feeling fine now. He owns a piece of the action. When the bombs fall, some will be his.

Me, I'm just along for the ride. And the story Life will pick up the tab for. I talk into my recorder some more, but mostly I compose in my head. I'll remember everything. That's one thing I have -- a good memory.

The desolate ruin of Ibaragi Prefecture passes under us. Now, for a few minutes, the plane belongs to Taves. Moving like a thing of broken sticks and straw, the old man hauls himself to a port and looks groundward. By the time he fishes the picture from his pocket, he's crying.

A couple of nights back, I talked with Taves. It was then that the old Iowa farmer showed me the picture. Taves, Jr. -- a handsome boy -- had been lost Thanksgiving Day, 1944, during San Antonio One. Since then, the old man had been saving for this trip. And though he'd had the money to buy bombs -- a few, at least -- he hadn't. He had come to see where young Roy had died. That was all.

While listening to Taves' sad, rasping whisper of a voice, I'd measured him and his dead boy for a place in my story. Human interest can be dynamite, and no one knows that better than me. Here, I decided, I had the elements of a real gut grabber.