The air raid sirens were wailing. Ignoring them, Emperor Hirohito seated himself at the conference table in the shelter adjoining the Imperial Library. The sirens had become a fixture of life in Tokyo. Nearly three weeks ago, on the night of March 10, 1945, American B-29s dropped incendiary bombs on the city. Over 100,000 Japanese perished in the fires, which turned 16 square miles of Japan's capital into charred rubble. The smoke and stench of the blazes still wafted through the Imperial Palace.
How much longer the reign of Hirohito—or the Empire of Japan—might last was very much on the emperor's mind. In the past few months Japan had suffered calamitous setbacks at the Battles of the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Iwo Jima. Now the Americans were about to invade Okinawa.
Frederick E. Wicklund, 83, who lived in Grosse Pointe until his death on Jan. 15, 2008, was raised in Des Ark, Ark. where he learned to hunt and fish and developed a lifelong love of bird dogs. After World War II he married his wife, Mary Jane, and they had four children. They were wed for 58 years. He worked for 25 years as an FBI agent, mostly in Detroit. He took part in the arrest of a Students for a Democratic Society fugitive in Detroit in 1970.
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