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Volume 5 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2414 | May 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the of Japanese & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq

Mark Selden

A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing have these experiences shaped the Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese American way of war over six decades in Cities and the American Way of War which the has been a major from World War II to Iraq [*] actor in important wars? The issues have particular salience in an epoch whose Selden central international discourse centers on terror and the War on Terror, one in World War II was a landmark in the which the terror inflicted on development and deployment ofnoncombatants by the major powers is of mass destructionfrequently neglected. associated with air power, notably the and International B-29 bomber, napalm and the atomic Law . An estimated 50 to 70 million people lay dead in its wake. In a sharp had been dropped from the air as reversal of the pattern of World War I early as 1849 on (from balloons) and of most earlier wars, a substantial and 1911 in Libya (from planes). majority of the dead were noncombatants. [1] The air war, which reached peak intensity with the area bombing, including atomic bombing, of major European and Japanese cities in its final year, had a devastating impact on noncombatant populations.

What is the logic and what have been the consequences—for its victims, for subsequent global patterns of warfare and for international law—of new technologies of mass destruction and their application associated with the rise of air power and bombing in World War II and after? Above all, how

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however, proved extraordinarily elusive then and since.

Throughout the long twentieth century, and particularly during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the inexorable advance of weapons technology went hand in hand with international efforts to place limits on killing and barbarism associated with war, particularly the killing of noncombatants in strategic or indiscriminate bombing raids. [4] This article considers the interplay of the development of powerful weapons and delivery systems associated with bombing A nineteenth century balloon and attempts to create international Major European powers attempted to use standards to curb the uses of bombing them in newly founded air forces during against noncombatants, with particular World War I. If the impact on the reference to the United States. outcomes was marginal, the advance of The strategic and ethical implications of air power alerted all nations to the the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and potential significance of airpower in Nagasaki have generated a vast future wars. [2] A series of international contentious literature, as have German conferences at the Hague beginning in and and atrocities. 1899 set out principles for limiting air By contrast, the US destruction of more war and securing the protection ofthan sixty Japanese cities prior to noncombatants from bombing and other Hiroshima has been slighted both in the attacks. The 1923 Hague conference scholarly literatures in English and crafted a sixty-two article “Rules of Aerial Japanese and in popular consciousness in Warfare,” which prohibited “Aerialboth Japan and the US. It has been bombardment for the purpose ofovershadowed by the atomic bombing terrorizing the civilian population, of and by heroic narratives of American destroying or damaging private property conduct in the “Good War”, an outcome not of a character, or of injuring not unrelated to the emergence of the US non-combatants.” It specifically limited as a superpower. [5] Arguably, however, bombardment to military objectives, the central technological, strategic and prohibited “indiscriminate bombardment ethical breakthroughs that would leave of the civilian population,” and held their stamp on subsequent wars occurred violators liable to pay compensation. [3] in area bombing of noncombatants prior Securing consensus and enforcing limits, to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and

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Nagasaki. A.C. Grayling explains the the contradiction between international different responses to and attempts to place limits on the atomic bombing this way: “. . . the frisson destructiveness of war and to hold of dread created by the thought of what nations and their military leaders atomic weaponry can do affects those responsible for violations of international who contemplate it more than those who laws of war ( and Tokyo actually suffer from it; for whether it is Tribunals and successive an atom bomb rather than tons of high conventions, particularly the 1949 explosives and incendiaries that does the convention protecting civilians and damage, not a jot of suffering is added to POWs) and the systematic violation of its victims that the burned and buried, those principles by the major powers. [7] the dismembered and blinded, the dying For example, while the Nuremberg and and bereaved of or did Tokyo Tribunals clearly articulated the not feel.” [6] principle of universality, the Tribunals, both held in cities that had been If others, notably , England and obliterated by Allied bombing, famously Japan led the way in area bombing, the shielded the victorious powers, above all targeting for destruction of entire cities the US, from responsibility for war with conventional weapons emerged in crimes and crimes against humanity. 1944-45 as the centerpiece ofUS Telford Taylor, chief counsel for war warfare. It was an approach that crimes prosecution at Nuremberg, made combined technological predominance the point with specific reference to the with minimization of US casualties in bombing of cities a quarter century later: ways that would become the hallmark of [8] the American way of war in campaigns from Korea and Indochina to the Gulf and Since both sides had played Iraq Wars and, indeed define the the terrible game of urban trajectory of major wars since the 1940s. destruction—the Allies far The result would be the decimation of more successfully—there noncombatant populations and was no basis for criminal extraordinary “kill ratios” favoring the charges against Germans or US military. Yet for the US, victory would Japanese, and in fact no such charges were brought . prove extraordinary elusive. This is one . . . Aerial bombardment had important reason why, six decades on, been used so extensively World War II retains its aura for and ruthlessly on the Allied Americans as the “Good War”, and why side as well as the Axis side Americans have yet to effectively come to that neither at Nuremberg grips with questions of ethics and nor Tokyo was the issue international law associated with their made a part of the trials. area bombing of Germany and Japan. From 1932 to the early years of World The twentieth century was notable for War II the United States was an

3 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF outspoken critic of bombing, notably [11] In the final years of the war, Max but not exclusively German and Japanese Hastings observed that Churchill and his bombing. President Franklin Roosevelt bomber commander Arthur Harris set out appealed to the warring nations in 1939 to concentrate “all available forces for on the first day of World War II “under no the progressive, systematic destruction of circumstances [to] undertake thethe urban areas of the Reich, city block bombardment from the air of civilian by city block, factory by factory, until the populations or of unfortified cities.” [9] enemy became a nation of troglodytes, Britain, and Germany agreed to scratching in the ruins.” [12] British limit bombing to strictly militarystrategists were convinced that the objectives, but in May 1940 German destruction of cities by night of exacted bombing attacks would break the morale 40,000 civilian lives and forced the Dutch of German civilians while crippling war surrender. Up to this point, bombing of production. From 1942 with the bombing cities had been isolated, sporadic and for of Lubeck followed by , Hamburg the most part confined to the axisand others, Harris pursued this strategy. powers. Then in , after The perfection of onslaught from the air, German bombers bombedLondon , or what should be understood as terror Churchill ordered an attack onBerlin . bombing, is better understood, however, The steady escalation of bombingas a British-American joint venture. targeting cities and their noncombatant populations followed. [10]

Strategic Bombing of

After entering the war followingPearl Harbor, the US continued to claim the moral high ground by abjuring civilian bombing. This stance was consistent with the prevailing view in the Air Force high command that the most efficient bombing strategies were those that pinpointed destruction of enemy forces and installations, factories, and railroads, not those designed to terrorize or kill noncombatants. Nevertheless, theUS Hamburg seen from 18,000 feet on 28, 1943 collaborated with indiscriminate bombing at Casablanca in 1943, when a US-British Throughout 1942-44, as the air war in division of labor emerged in which the Europe swung ineluctably toward area British conducted the indiscriminate bombing, the US Air Force proclaimed its bombing of cities and the US sought to adherence to precision bombing. destroy military and industrial targets. However, this approach failed not only to

4 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF force surrender on either Germany or the midst of it and there isn’t a Japan, but even to inflict significant damned thing to breathe. damage on their war-making capacity. “Along with the Nazi extermination With German artillery and interceptors taking a heavy toll on US planes, camps, the killing of Soviet and American pressure mounted for a strategic shift at prisoners, and other enemy atrocities,” a time of growing sophistication, Ronald Schaffer observes, Dresden“ numbers and range of US aircraft, and became one of the moral causes célèbres the invention of napalm and the of World War II.” [15] Although far worse perfection of radar. Ironically, while was in the offing in Japan, Dresden radar could have paved the way for a provoked the last significant public reaffirmation of tactical bombing, now discussion of the bombing of women and made feasible at night, in the context of children to take place during World War the endgame of the war what transpired II, and the city became synonymous with was the massive assault on cities and terror bombing by the US and Britain. their urban populations. Coming in the wake of both the Hamburg and bombings, the British On February 13-14, 1945 British bombers government faced sharp questioning in with US planes following up destroyed parliament. [16] In the United States, Dresden, a historic cultural center with debate was largely provoked not by the no significant military industry or bases. destruction wrought by the raids, but by By conservative estimate, 35,000 people an report widely were incinerated in a single raid led by. published in the US and Britain stating [13] The American writer Kurt Vonnegut, explicitly that “the Allied air commanders then a young POW in Dresden, penned have made the long-awaited decision to the classic account: [14] adopt deliberate terror bombing of the great German population centers as a They burnt the whole damn ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler’s down . . . . Every day we walked into the city and dug doom.” American officials quickly acted into basements and shelters to to neutralize the report by pointing to the get the corpses out, as a widely publicized great cathedral of sanitary measure. When we Cologne, left standing after US bombing went into them, a typical as a symbol of American humanity, and shelter, an ordinary basement by reiterating US adherence to principles usually, looked like a streetcar restricting attacks to military targets. full of people who’d Secretary of War Henry Stimson stated simultaneously had heart that “Our policy never has been to inflict failure. Just people sitting there in their chairs, all dead. A terror bombing on civilian populations,” storm is an amazing thing. It claiming that Dresden, as a major doesn’t occur in nature. It’s fed transportation hub, was of military by the tornadoes that occur in significance. [17] In fact,US public

5 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF discussion, not to speak of protest, was packed wooden structures of Japanese minimal; in Britain there was more cities. [19] In the final six months of the impassioned discussion, but with the war, the US threw the full weight of its smell of victory in the air, theair power into campaigns to burn whole government easily quieted the storm. The Japanese cities to the ground and bombing continued. Strategic bombing terrorize, incapacitate and kill their had passed its sternest test in the realm largely defenseless residents in an effort of public reaction inBritain and the to force surrender. United States. As Michael Sherry and Cary Karacas have pointed out for the US and Japan respectively, prophecy preceded practice in the destruction of Japanese cities, and well before US planners undertook strategic bombing. Thus Sherry observes that “Walt Disney imagined an orgiastic destruction of Japan by air in his 1943 animated feature Victory Through Air Power (based on Alexander P. De Seversky’s 1942 book),” while Karacas notes that the best-selling Japanese Dresden. Bodies found beneath wreckage writer Juzo, beginning in his early 1930s “air-defense novels”, anticipated Strategic Bombing of Japan the destruction of Tokyo by bombing. [20] Both reached mass audiences in the US But it was in the Pacific theatre, and and Japan, in important senses specifically in Japan, that the full brunt of anticipating the events to follow. air power would be felt. Between 1932 and 1945, Japan had bombed , Curtis LeMay was appointed commander Nanjing, Chongqing and other cities, of the 21st Bomber Command in the testing chemical weapons in Ningbo and Pacific on January 20, 1945. Capture of throughout Zhejiang province. [18] In the the Marianas, including , early months of 1945, the United States and in summer 1944 had placed shifted its attention to the Pacific as it Japanese cities within effective range of gained the capacity to attack Japan from the B-29 “Superfortress” bombers, while newly captured bases inTinian and Japan’s depleted air and naval power left Guam. While theUS continued to it virtually defenseless against sustained proclaim adherence to tactical bombing, air attack. tests of firebombing options against Japanese homes throughout 1943-44 LeMay was the primary architect, a demonstrated that M-69 bombs were strategic innovator, and most quotable highly effective against the densely spokesman for US policies of putting

6 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF enemy cities, and later villages and room for bombs, and flying at altitudes forests, to the torch from Japan to Korea averaging 7,000 feet to evade detection, to Vietnam. In this, he was emblematic of the bombers, which had been designed the American way of war that emerged for high-altitude precision attacks, from World War II. Viewed from another carried two kinds of incendiaries: M47s, angle, however, he was but a link in a 100-pound oil gel bombs, 182 per chain of command that had begun to aircraft, each capable of starting a major conduct area bombing in Europe. That fire, followed by M69s, 6-pound gelled- chain of command extended upward gasoline bombs, 1,520 per aircraft in through the Joint Chiefs to the president addition to a few high explosives to deter who authorized what would become the firefighters. [25] The attack on an area centerpiece of US warfare. [22] that the US Strategic Bombing Survey estimated to be 84.7 percent residential The US resumed bombing of Japan after a succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of two-year lull following the 1942 Doolittle air force planners. Whipped by fierce raids in fall 1944. The goal of thewinds, flames detonated by the bombs bombing assault that destroyed Japan’s leaped across a fifteen square mile area major cities in the period between May of Tokyo generating immense and August 1945, the US Strategic that engulfed and killed scores of Bombing Survey explained, was “either to thousands of residents. bring overwhelming pressure on her to surrender, or to reduce her capability of resisting invasion. . . . [by destroying] the basic economic and social fabric of the country.” [23] A proposal by the Chief of Staff of the Twentieth Air Force to target the imperial palace was rejected, but in the wake of successive failures to eliminate such key strategic targets as Japan’s Nakajima Aircraft Factory west of Tokyo, the area bombing of Japanese cities was approved. [24]

The full fury of firebombing and napalm was unleashed on the night ofMarch Tokyo bombing along the Sumida River 9-10, 1945 when LeMay sent 334 B-29s low over Tokyo from the Marianas. Their In contrast with Vonnegut’s “wax mission was to reduce the city to rubble, ” description of Dresden victims, kill its citizens, and instill terror in the accounts from inside the inferno that survivors, with jellied gasoline andengulfed Tokyo chronicle scenes of utter napalm that would create a sea of flames. carnage. We have come to measure the Stripped of their guns to make more efficacy of bombing by throw weights and

7 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF kill ratios, eliding the perspectives of Nature reinforced man's handiwork in their victims. But what of those who felt the form of akakaze, the red wind that the wrath of the bombs? swept with hurricane force across the Tokyo plain and propelled firestorms cameraman Ishikawa Koyoacross the city with terrifying speed and described the streets of Tokyo as “rivers intensity. The wind drove temperatures of fire . . . flaming pieces of furniture up to eighteen hundred degrees exploding in the heat, while the people Fahrenheit, creating superheated vapors themselves blazed like ‘matchsticks’ as that advanced ahead of the flames, killing their wood and paper homes exploded in or incapacitating their victims. "The flames. Under the wind and the gigantic mechanisms of death were so multiple breath of the fire, immense incandescent and simultaneous—oxygen deficiency and vortices rose in a number of places, carbon monoxide poisoning, radiant heat swirling, flattening, sucking whole blocks and direct flames, debris and the of houses into their maelstrom of fire.” trampling feet of stampeding crowds—that causes of death were later Father Flaujac, a French cleric, hard to ascertain . . .” [27] compared the firebombing to the Tokyo earthquake twenty-two years earlier, an The Strategic Bombing Survey, whose event whose massive destruction,formation a few months earlier provided another form of prophecy, had alerted an important signal ofRoosevelt ’s both Japanese science fiction writers and support for strategic bombing, provided a some of the original planners of the technical description of the and Tokyo holocaust: [26] its effects on Tokyo:

In September 1923, during the The chief characteristic of the great earthquake, I sawTokyo . . . was the presence burning for 5 days. I saw in Honjo of a fire front, an extended wall of a heap of 33,000 corpses of fire moving to leeward, preceded by people who burned or suffocated a mass of pre-heated, turbid, at the beginning of the burning vapors . . . . The 28-mile- bombardment . . . After the first per-hour wind, measured a mile quake there were 20-odd centers from the fire, increased to an of fire, enough to destroy the estimated 55 miles at the perimeter, capital. How could the and probably more within. An conflagration be stopped when extended fire swept over 15 square incendiary bombs in the dozens miles in 6 hours . . . . The area of the of thousands now dropped over fire was nearly 100 percent burned; the four corners of the district no structure or its contents escaped and with Japanese houses which damage. are only match boxes? . . . Where could one fly? The fire was The survey concluded—plausibly, but everywhere. only for events prior toAugust 6,

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1945—that measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles of Tokyo were “probably more persons lost their lives by destroyed on a night when fierce winds fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at whipped the flames and walls of fire any time in the history of man. People blocked tens of thousands fleeing for died from extreme heat, from oxygentheir lives. An estimated 1.5 million deficiency, from carbon monoxidepeople lived in the burned out areas. asphyxiation, from being trampledGiven a near total inability to fight beneath the feet of stampeding crowds, of the magnitude produced by the bombs, and from drowning. The largest number of it is possible to imagine that casualties victims were the most vulnerable: women, may have been several times higher than children and the elderly.” the figures presented on both sides of the conflict. The single effective Japanese How many people died on the night of government measure taken to reduce the 9-10 in what flight commander slaughter of US bombing was the 1944 Gen. Thomas Power termed “the greatest evacuation to the countryside of 400,000 single disaster incurred by any enemy in children from major cities, 225, 000 of military history?” The Strategic Bombing them from Tokyo. [29] Survey estimated that 87,793 people died in the raid, 40,918 were injured, and Following the attack, LeMay, never one 1,008,005 people lost their homes.to mince words, said that he wanted Robert Rhodes, estimating the dead at Tokyo “burned down—wiped right off the more than 100,000 men, women and map” to “shorten the war.”Tokyo did children, suggested that probably a burn. Subsequent raids brought the million more were injured and another devastated area of Tokyo to more than 56 million were left homeless. The Tokyo square miles, provoking the flight of Fire Department estimated 97,000 killed millions of . and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Police offered a figure of 124,711 killed and wounded and 286,358 building and homes destroyed. The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of , wind conditions, and survivors’ accounts. [28] With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile, the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting

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bombs destroyed 31 square miles of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kobe. Overall, bombing strikes destroyed 40 percent of the 66 Japanese cities targeted, with total tonnage dropped onJapan increasing from 13,800 tons in March to 42,700 tons in July. [31] If the bombing of Dresden produced a ripple of public debate in Europe, no discernible wave of revulsion, not to speak of protest, took place in the US or Europe in the wake of the far greater destruction of Japanese cities and the slaughter of civilian populations on a scale that had no parallel in the history of bombing.

In July, US planes blanketed the few remaining Japanese cities that had been spared firebombing with an “Appeal to the People.” “As you know,” it read, “America which stands for humanity, does not wish to injure the innocent people, so you had better evacuate these cities.” Half the leafleted cities were Curtis LeMay in the 1940s firebombed within days of the warning. US planes ruled the skies. Overall, by one No previous or subsequent conventional calculation, theUS firebombing bombing raid ever came close to campaign destroyed 180 square miles of generating the toll in death and 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 destruction of the great Tokyo raid of people and injured an additional 400,000, March 9-10. The airborne assault on figures that exclude the atomic bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities ground of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [32] on relentlessly. According to Japanese police statistics, the 65 raids onTokyo Between January and July 1945, the US between December 6, 1944 and August firebombed and destroyed all but five 13, 1945 resulted in 137,582 casualties, Japanese cities, deliberately sparing 787,145 homes and buildings destroyed, Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital, and and 2,625,279 people displaced. [30] four others. The extent of the destruction Following the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, was impressive ranging from 50 to 60% the firebombing was extendedof the destroyed in cities nationwide. In the ten-day periodincluding Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo, to beginning on March 9, 9,373 tons of 60 to 88% in seventeen cities, to 98.6% in

10 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF the case of Toyama. [33] In the end, the fanaticism in my view is best understood Atomic Bomb Selection Committee chose as a means of operationalizing national Hiroshima, Kokura,Niigata , and goals. Taken for granted were the Nagasaki as the pristine targets tolegitimacy and benevolence of American display the awesome power of the atomic global power and a perception of the bomb to Japan and the world in the event Japanese as both uniquely brutal and that would both bring to a spectacular inherently inferior. Technology was end the costliest war in human history harnessed to the driving force of and send a powerful message to the American nationalism, which repeatedly Soviet Union. came to the fore in times of war, and was fashioned under wartime conditions, Michael Sherry has compellinglybeginning with the conquest of the described the triumph of technological in 1898 and running through fanaticism as the hallmark of the air war successive wars and police actions in that quintessentially shaped theLatin America and Asia that spanned the American way of fighting and heavily long twentieth century. In other words, stamped remembrances of the War ever technological fanaticism is inseparable after: from American nationalism and The shared mentality of the conceptions of a benevolent American- fanatics of air war was their dominated global order. In contrast to dedication to assembling and British, Japanese and other nationalisms perfecting their methods of associated with expansive powers, the destruction, and . . . doing so American approach to the postwar order overshadowed the original lay not in a vision centered on the purposes justifying acquisition of colonies but in a global destruction . . . .The lack of a network of military bases and naval and proclaimed intent to destroy, air power that only in recent years has the sense of being driven by begun to be understood as the American the twin demands of way of empire. [34] bureaucracy and technology, distinguished America’s Throughout the spring and summer of technological fanaticism from 1945 the US air war in Japan reached an its enemies’ ideological fanaticism. intensity that is still perhaps unrivaled in the magnitude of human slaughter. [35] Technological fanaticism served toThat moment was a product of the conceal the larger purposes of power combination of technological both from military planners and the breakthroughs, American nationalism, public. This suggestive formulation, and the erosion of moral and political however, conceals core ideologicalscruples pertaining to the killing of patterns at the heart of Americancivilians, perhaps intensified by the strategic thought. Wartime technological racism that crystallized in the Pacific

11 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF theatre. [36] their survival, in particular. Certainly in this epoch no others have bombed on a The targeting for destruction of entire scale approaching that of the US. The US populations, whether indigenous peoples, would conceal the deliberate annihilation religious infidels, or others deemed of noncombatants with the figleaf that inferior or , may be as old as human Sahr Conway-Lanz describes as the myth history, but the forms it takes are as new of collateral damage, that is the claim, as the latest technologies of destruction however systematic the bombing, that and strategic innovation, of which air the intent was elimination of military power, firebombing and nuclear weapons targets, not the slaughter of are particularly notable. [37] The most noncombatants. important way in which World War II shaped the moral and technological tenor Concerted efforts to protect civilians of mass destruction was the erosion in from the ravages of war reached a peak the course of war of the stigmain the aftermath of World War II in the associated with the systematic targeting founding of the , German of civilian populations from the air, and and Japanese War Crimes Tribunals, and elimination of the constraints, which for the 1949 Geneva Accords and its 1977 some years had restrained certain air Protocol. The Nuremberg Indictment powers from area bombing. What was defined “crimes against humanity” as new was both the scale of killing made “murder, extermination, enslavement, possible by the new technologies and the , and other inhumane acts routinization of mass killing or state committed against any civilian terrorism. If area bombing remained population, before or during the war,” controversial throughout much of World language that resonated powerfully with War II, something to be concealed or the area bombing campaigns not only of denied by its practitioners, by the end of Japan and Germany but of Britain and the the conflagration it would become the US. [38] These efforts appear to have acknowledged centerpiece of wardone little to stay the hand of power. making, emblematic above all of the Indeed, while the atomic bomb would American way of war even as the nature leave a deep imprint on the collective of the targets and the weapons were consciousness of the twentieth century, transformed by new technologies and memory of the area bombings and confronted new forms of resistance. firebombing of major cities soon Indeed, for six decades the US (and those disappeared from the consciousness of all fighting under its umbrella) has been but the victims. virtually alone in fighting wars and police actions notable for their reliance on airpower in general and the deliberate targeting for destruction of civilians, and the infrastructure that makes possible

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built environment. It was also calculated to demonstrate to the Japanese government and people, to the authorities in the Soviet Union and other potential challengers of American preeminence, and to the people of the world, the omnipotence of American power and the certain destruction that would be visited on any who defied the United States. The debate over the use of the atomic bomb atHiroshima and Nagasaki has reverberated throughout Prime Minister Tojo Hideki at Tokyo Trial the postwar era, centered on the killing of noncombatants and on its significance The ability to destroy an entire city and annihilate its population in a single in ending World War II and shaping the bombing campaign was not only far more subsequent US-Soviet conflict that “efficient” and less costly for the attacker defined postwar geopolitics. [39] In a than previous methods of warfare, it also sense, however, the very focus of that sanitized slaughter. Air power distanced debate on the atomic bomb, and later on executioners from victims, transforming the development of the hydrogen bomb, the visual and tactile experience of may have contributed to the silencing of killing. The bombardier never looks the no less pressing issues associated squarely into the eyes of the victim, nor with the killing of noncombatants with does the act of destruction have the ever more powerful ‘conventional’ physical immediacy for the perpetrator of weapons. by sword or even shooting The US did not drop atomic bombs again with a machine gun. This may be in the six decades since the end of World particularly important when the principal War II, although it repeatedly threatened targets are women, children and the their use in Korea, in Vietnam and elderly. elsewhere. But it incorporated The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and annihilation of noncombatants in the Nagasaki was the pinnacle of the process bombing programs that have been of annihilation of civilian populations in integral to the successive “conventional the pursuit of military victory. While wars” that it has waged subsequently. President Truman claimed that theWith area bombing at the core of its Hiroshima bomb targeted a naval base, strategic , US attacks on cities the decision to detonate the bomb in the and noncombatants would run the gamut skies above Hiroshima and Nagasaki was from firebombing, napalming, cluster taken to maximize the killing of their bombing, and atomic bombing to the use inhabitants and the destruction of the of chemical defoliants and depleted

13 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF uranium weapons and buster villagers, though this produced the bombs in an ever expanding circle of largest number of the estimated ten to destruction. [40] Indiscriminate bombing thirty million Chinese who lost their lives of noncombatants has been responsible in the war, a number that far surpasses for the most massive destruction and loss the half million or more Japanese of life throughout this epoch, even while noncombatants who died at the hands of the US staunchly maintains that it does US bombing, and may have exceeded not deliberately kill civilians, thereby Soviet losses to Nazi invasion hewing to Conway-Lanz’s collateralconventionally estimated at 20 million damage principle to protect it not only lives. [41] In that and subsequent wars it from political criticism in the US, but also would be the signature barbarities such from international criticisms. as the , the Bataan Death March, and the massacres at World War II remains unrivaled in the Nogunri and My Lai rather than the annals of war by important measures quotidian events that defined the such as the number of people killed and systematic daily and hourly killing, which the scale of mass destruction. In that have attracted sustained attention, war, it was not the bombing of cities but sparked bitter controversy, and shaped Nazi genocide against , Catholics, historical memory. Romany, homosexuals and other Germans as well as Poles, the German invasion of theSoviet Union, and Japanese slaughter of Asian noncombatants that exacted the heaviest price in human lives. Each of these examples had its unique character and historical and ideological origins. All rested on dehumanizing assumptions concerning the “other” and produced Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi's Nanjing large-scale slaughter of noncombatant Massacre Mural populations. Japan’s war produced notable cases of atrocities that, then and The war dead in Europe alone in World later, captured world attention. They War II, including the Soviet Union, have included the Nanjing Massacre, the been estimated in the range of 30 to 40 bombings of Shanghai, Nanjing, Hankou, million, fifty percent more than the toll in Chongqing and other cities, theWorld War I. To this we must add 25 to enslavement of the comfort women, and 35 million Asian victims in the fifteen- the vivisection experiments andyear resistance war in China (1931-45), biowarfare bombs of Unit 731. Less noted approximately three million Japanese, then and since were the systematic and millions more inSoutheast Asia. barbarities perpetrated against resistant Among the important instances of the

14 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF killing of noncombatants in World War II, the US, by fighting no war on its own soil the US destruction of Japanese cities is since the Civil War, and by adapting perhaps least known and leaststrategies that maximize its technological controversial. In contrast to the fierce and economic strength and minimize its and continuing debate over the atomic own casualties, would replicate to even bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the greater numerical advantage in Nazi extermination of Jews and others, subsequent wars. and the far smaller-scale allied bombings World War II remains indelibly engraved of Dresden and Hamburg, and such in American memory as the “Good War” Japanese atrocities as the Nanjing and in important respects it was. In Massacre and the vivisection experiments confronting the war machines of Nazi of Unit 731, the US firebombing of Germany and Imperial Japan, the United Japanese cities has virtually disappeared States played a large role in defeating from international and even American aggressors and opening the way for a and Japanese historical memory of the wave of decolonization that swept the war. globe in subsequent decades. It was also In World War I, ninety percent of the a war that catapulted the United States fatalities directly attributable to the war to global supremacy and established the were military, nearly all of theminstitutional foundations for the global Europeans and Americans. Mostprojection of American power in a network of military bases and unrivaled estimates place World War II casualties technological supremacy. in Europe in the range of 50-60 percent noncombatants. In the case of Asia, when For most Americans, in retrospect World war-induced famine casualties areWar II seemed a “Good War” in another included, the noncombatant death toll sense: the US entered and exited the war was almost certainly substantially higher buoyed by absolute moral certainty borne in both absolute and percentage terms. of a mission to punish aggression in the [42] The United States, its homeland form of a genocidal Nazi fascism and untouched by war, sufferedJapanese imperialism run amok. approximately 100,000 deaths in the Moreover, Americans remember the entire Asian theater, a figure lower than generosity of US aid not only to war torn that for the single Tokyo air raid of allies, but to rebuild the societies of March 10, 1945, and well below the former adversaries, Germany and Japan. death toll at Hiroshima or in the Battle of Such an interpretation masks the extent Okinawa. Japan's three million war dead, to which Americans shared with their while thirty times the number of US adversaries an abiding nationalism and dead, was still only a small fraction of the expansionist urges. In contrast to earlier toll suffered by the Chinese who resisted territorial empires, this took the form of the Japanese military juggernaut. These new regional and global structures are numbers of relative casualties that facilitating the exercise of American

15 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF power. The victory, which propelled the form of public apology and substantial US to a hegemonic position which carried official reparations. For its part, the authority to condemn and punish war Japanese state continues to reject official crimes committed by defeated nations, reparations claims to such war victims as remains a major obstacle to aKorean and Chinese forced laborers and thoroughgoing reassessment of thethe military comfort women (sexual wartime conduct of the US in general, slaves), while the war remains a fiercely and issues of mass destruction carried contested intellectual-political issue as out by its forces in particular. demonstrated by the decades long conflicts over textbook treatments of World War II, building on and extending colonialism and war, the Yasukuni shrine atavistic impulses deeply rooted in earlier (the symbol of emperor-centered civilizations and combining them with nationalism, empire and war), the more destructive technologies, produced military comfort women, and the Nanjing new forms of human depravity. German Massacre controversies. [44] and Japanese crimes have long been subjected to international criticism from In contrast to these responses to the war the war crimes tribunals of the 1940s to in Germany and Japan, and even to the the present. [43] At Nuremberg and ongoing debate in the US about the uses subsequent trials, more than 1,800of the atomic bomb, there has been Germans were convicted of war crimes virtually no awareness of, not to speak of and 294 were executed. At the Tokyo critical reflection on, the US bombing of Trials, 28 were indicted and seven were Japanese civilians in the months prior to sentenced to death. At subsequent A and Hiroshima. The systematic bombing of B class trials conducted by the allied Japanese noncombatants in the course of powers between 1945 and 1951, 5,700 the destruction of Japanese cities must be Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese were added to a list of the horrific legacies of indicted. 984 were initially sentenced to the war that includes Nazi genocide and death (the sentences of 50 of these were a host of Japanese war crimes against commuted); 475 received life sentences, Asian peoples. Only by engaging the and 2,944 received limited prison terms. issues, and above all the impact of this The result of military defeat, occupation, approach to the massive killing of and war crimes tribunals has beennoncombatants that has been central to protracted and profound reflection and all subsequent US wars, can Americans self-criticism by significant groups within begin to approach the Nuremberg ideal both countries. In the case ofthat holds victors as well as vanquished Germany—but not yet Japan—there has to the same standards with respect to been meaningful official recognition of crimes against humanity, or the standard the criminal conduct of genocidal and of the 1949 Geneva Accord which other barbaric policies as well asrequires the protection of civilians in appropriate restitution to victims in the time of war. This is the principle of

16 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF universality enshrined at Nuremberg and divisions among Americans seeking to violated in practice by the US and others strike an appropriate balance between beginning with the 1946 trials, which combat and atrocity, and between war declared US immunity from prosecution and genocide. [46] But with absolute for war crimes. American preponderance of technological power and the threat of enemies from In his opening address to the tribunal, Communists to terrorists magnified by Chief Prosecutor for the United States, government and the media, in practice, Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel there were few restraints on the for the United States, spoke eloquently, annihilation of noncombatants in the and memorably, on the principle of succession of US wars that have exacted universality. “If certain acts of violation such a heavy toll in lives. American self- of treaties are crimes,” he said, “they are conceptions of benevolence and justice crimes whether the United States does have remained fixed not on the reality of them or whether Germany does them, the killing of noncombatants but on the and we are not prepared to lay down a combination of American intentions in rule of criminal conduct against others combat and generosity in charting which we would not be willing to have postwar recovery in all wars since 1945. invoked against us....We must never forget that the record on which we judge Epilogue: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and these defendants is the record on which the Uses of Airpower to Target history will judge us tomorrow. To pass Noncombatants these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.” [45] The centrality of the wholesale killing of noncombatants through the myriad uses Every US president from Roosevelt to of air power runs like a red line from the George W. Bush has endorsed in practice bombings of 1944-45 through the Korean an approach to warfare that targets and Indochinese wars to the Gulf, entire populations for annihilation, one and Iraq wars. In the course that eliminates all vestiges of distinction of six decades since the firebombing and between combatant and noncombatant, atomic bombing of Japan, while important with deadly consequences. The awesome continuities are observable, such as the power of the atomic bomb has obscured firebombing and napalming of cities, the fact that this strategy came of age in new, more powerful and versatile aircraft the firebombing of Tokyo and became the and weapons would be deployed in the centerpiece of US war making from that course of successive American wars time forward. fought predominantly in Asia.

That poisoned chalice was put toGeneral Curtis LeMay, the primary American lips in the 1945 trials and all architect of the firebombing and atomic the more so in subsequent wars. Sahr bombing strategy applied toJapan in Conway-Lanz rightly points to the deep 1945 played a comparable role in Korea

17 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF and Vietnam. Never one to pull punches, sought to curtail indiscriminate attacks on or to minimize the claimed impact of noncombatants. Beginning inKorea , US bombing, LeMay recalled of Korea: bombing was extended from cities to the countryside with devastating effects. In what We slipped a note kind of under has called the “final act of this the door into the Pentagon and barbaric air war,” in spring 1953 North Korea’s said, “Look, let us go up main irrigation dams were destroyed shortly after the rice had been transplanted. [49] there…and burn down five of the biggest in North Here we consider one particularly Korea – and they’re not very big important element of American bombing – and that ought to stop it.” Well, the answer to that was of Vietnam. Franklin Roosevelt, in 1943 four or five screams – “You’ll issued a statement that long stood as the kill a lot of non-combatants,” clearest expression of US policy on the and “It’s too horrible.” Yet over use of chemical and biological weapons. a period three years or so…we In response to reports of Axis plans to burned down every town in use poison gases, Roosevelt warned that North Korea and South Korea, “use of such weapons has been outlawed too… Now, over a period of by the general opinion of civilized three years this is palatable, but mankind. This country has not used them, to kill a few people to stop this and I hope that we never will be from happening – a lot of people compelled to use them. I state can’t stomach it.” [47] categorically that we shall under no In the course of three years,US/UN circumstances resort to the use of such forces in Korea flew 1,040,708 sorties weapons unless they are first used by our and dropped 386,037 tons of bombs and enemies.” [50] This principle, 32,357 tons of napalm. Counting all types incorporated in US Army Field Manual of air borne ordnance, including rockets 27-10, Law of Land Warfare, issued in and machine-gun ammunition, the total 1954, affirmed the principle of no first tonnage comes to 698,000 tons. Marilyn use of gas warfare and bacteriological Young estimates the death toll in Korea, warfare. By 1956, that provision had most of it noncombatants, at two to four disappeared, replaced by the assertion million, and in the South alone, more that the US was party to no treaty in than five million people had beenforce “that prohibits or restricts the use displaced, according to UN estimates. in warfare of toxic or nontoxic gases, or [48] smoke or incendiary materials or of bacteriological warfare.” US CBW One striking feature of these wars has been the research and procurement efforts, that extension of bombing from a predominantly began in the early 1950s and culminated urban phenomenon to the uses of airpower directed against rural areas ofKorea and in the Kennedy administration in the Vietnam, leading the United States to breach early 1960s, resulted in the use of another of international principles that had chemical and biological weapons both

18 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF against Vietnamese forces and nature, designed for this war.” Nixon then specifically extending from theexploded: “I want them to hit everything. destruction of forest cover to theI want them to use the big planes, the destruction of crops. As Seymour Hersh small planes, everything they can that documents, the US CBW program in will help out there, and let’s start giving Vietnam “gradually escalated from the them a little shock.” Here was an early use of leaf-killing defoliants to rice-killing warning signal of the “Shock and Awe” herbicides and nausea-producing gases.” strategy of a generation later. Kissinger [51] How widespread wereUS gas relayed the order: “A massive bombing attacks in Vietnam? A 1967 Japanese campaign in Cambodia. Anything that study of US anticrop and defoliation flies on anything that moves.” [54] In the attacks prepared by the head of the course of the Vietnam War theUS Agronomy Section of the Japan Science embraced chemical and biological Council concluded that more than 3.8 weapons of mass destruction as integral million acres of arable land inSouth parts of its arsenal. Vietnam was ruined and more than 1,000 peasants and 13,000 livestock were Another story of indiscriminate bombing killed. [52] In the face of US military in Cambodia came to light thirty six years claims that the gases were benign, Dr. after the events. The new evidence makes Pham Duc Nam told Japanese clear that Cambodia was bombed far investigators that a three-day attack near more heavily than was previously known, Da Nang from February 25 to 27, 1966 and that, unbeknownst to the American had poisoned both livestock and people, public or the world, it began not with some of whom died. “Pregnant women Nixon in 1970 but on October 4, 1965. gave birth to still-born or premature During a fall 2000 visit toVietnam , children. Most of the affected cattle died President Clinton made available detailed from serious diarrhea, and river fish Air Force records to help the Vietnamese, floated on the surface of the water belly Cambodian and Laotian governments to up, soon after the chemicals wereuncover the remains of two thousand spread.” [53] missing American soldiers. The records provided specific data on place and scale Before turning to Iraq, it is worth of bombing. The incomplete data reveal recalling President Nixon’s comments on that October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the bombing of Cambodia as preserved in the United States dropped far more the Kissinger tapes released in May 2004. ordnance on Cambodia than was In a burst of anger on Dec. 9, 1970, when previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ Nixon railed over what he saw as the Air worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on Force’s lackluster bombing campaign in 113,716 sites. The consequences go far Cambodia. Kissinger responded: “The Air beyond the dead, the injured, and the Force is designed to fight an air battle continued dangers of unexploded against the Soviet Union. They are not ordinance. As Taylor Owen and Ben

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Kiernan argue persuasively, “Civilian rulers bombing their own peoples--the casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged scale of those operations (however populace into the arms of an insurgency devastating for the locals) and the fact that had enjoyed relatively little support that they involved such unequal forces until the bombing began, setting in did not stir Americans’ apocalyptic fears motion the expansion of the Vietnam War and fantasies.” Where air power did deeper into Cambodia, a coup d’état in appear in American consciousness, he 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, finds, “American bombing came across and ultimately the Cambodian genocide.” on U.S. television screens more as a [55] fascinating video game than as a devastating onslaught.” More It is notable, by contrast to the preceding importantly, he concludes, because of the six decades of American warfare, that the attack on New ’s Twin Towers and centrality of the image of airpower and the Pentagon on 9/11, and because of the the bomb as the summa of destructive horrific images that it conjured, in might, has shifted dramatically in the contrast to the heroic images of air Iraq War: Americans remember World power in World War II, the prophecy War II above all as the crowningassociated with it “did not seem to last achievement of air power, symbolized long or run deep.” [56] and mythologized by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; theyIn thinking about the Iraq War and remember the era of US-Sovietcontemporary American consciousness, I confrontation above all as one of nuclear would like to suggest an alternative standoff; and they remember both Korea scenario. First, I believe that 9/11 and and Vietnam in no small part through the Twin Towers in flames remains the images of American predominance in the iconic image of our times in American air, as in the bombing of Hanoi and North consciousness. It is the central mobilizing Vietnam as well as the defoliation using image for US war making and the primal Agent Orange, air power. But, as Michael impulse that drives American fears of the Sherry observes, air power has largely future. Second, as Seymour Hersh and receded from consciousness in the wake others have observed, the US military, of the collapse of the Soviet Union and while continuing to pursue massive the shift in target from the otherbombing of Iraqi neighborhoods, above superpower to faceless terroristsall in the destruction of Falluja but even associated with Al-Quaida and Islamic in Baghdad, has chosen to throw a cloak militants. Sherry concludes that a sea of silence over the air war. The major change has occurred, a shift frommedia have faithfully honored official prophecy to memory in which air power dicta in this as in so many other ways. declines in American consciousness: [57] Finally, among the George W. Bush “Bombers attacking Baghdad, B-52s over administration’s major initiatives have , Russian planes hitting , been the efforts to seize control of space

20 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF as the centerpiece of global domination We have shown the decisive impact of the in an era that is slated to replace the final year of World War II in setting in bomber as the primary delivery weapon place the preeminence of strategic of mass destruction. [58] Air power bombing as quintessential to the US way remains among the major causes of of war, one that would characterize death, destruction, dislocation andsubsequent major wars that have division in contemporary Iraq in a war wreaked yet greater devastation on that had taken approximately 655,000 noncombatant populations. Yet for all the lives by the summer of 2006 in the most power unleashed by US bombers, for all authoritative study to date, that of The the millions of victims, in the six decades Lancet) and created more than two since 1945, victory against successive, million refugees abroad and an equal predominantly Asian foes, has proved number displaced internally (one in seven extraordinary elusive for the United Iraqis are displaced). Largely unreported States. in the US mainstream press, and invisible This article was written for Japan Focus. in US television and reportage, this Posted on May 2, 2007. is the central reality that confronts the Iraq people. US strategy has produced Mark Selden is a research associate at the East the explosive social divisions thatAsia Program, , and a promise to lead to permanent warfare in coordinator of Japan Focus. His recent books Iraq and throughout the region. Despite include War and State Terrorism. The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long the unchallenged air supremacy that the Twentieth Century. US has wielded in Iraq since 1991 and especially since 2003, there is no end in Notes sight to US warfare and civil war in Iraq and throughout the region. [59] * The author thanks Noam Chomsky, Bruce Cumings, John Dower, Laura Hein, Gavan McCormack, and Michael Sherry for critical comments, sources and suggestions. The term holocaust used in the title draws on its original meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition: “Complete consumption by fire; complete destruction, especially of a large number of persons; a great slaughter or massacre.”

[1] Estimates vary, especially in the Pacific theatre. See, for example,John Ellis, World War II - A statistical survey (New York: Facts on File, 1993); John W. Dower, War Without Mercy (New York: Falluja under US bombardment, 2004 Pantheon Books, 1986), pp. 294-300; in

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Roger Chickering, Stig Forster and Bernd terrorism and the targeting of civilians by Greiner, eds., A World at Total War: Japan and the United States in Mark Selden Global Conflict and the Politics ofand Alvin So, eds., War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan and the Asia Pacific in Destruction 1937-1945 (Cambridge: the Long Twentieth Century (Lanham: Rowman Cambridge University Press, 2005) p. 3, and Littlefield, 2004). Chickering and Forster estimate military deaths at 15 million and civilian deaths at [5] A small number of works have drawn more than 45 million; Wikipedia offers a attention to US war atrocities, typically wide-ranging discussion of numbers and centering on the torture, killing and sources. desecration of captured Japanese soldiers. These include Peter Schrijvers, [2] Lee Kennett,A History of Strategic The GI War AgainstJapan . American Bombing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During 1982), pp. 9-38; Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2000), pp. World War II (New York: NYU Press, 31-42. 2002) and John Dower,War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific [3] “General Report of the Commission of War (New York: Pantheon, 1986). The Jurists at the Hague,” American Journal of Wartime Journals of Charles Lindbergh International Law, XVII (), Supplement, pp. 250-51. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) is seminal in disclosing atrocities [4] A valuable synthesis of the literature on war committed against Japanese POWs. Two and the noncombatant is Sahr Conway-Lanz, recent works closely assess the bombing Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant of noncombatants and the ravaging of Immunity, and Atrocity After World War II nature and society as a result of strategic (: Routledge, 2006). A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities. The History and Moral bombing that has been ignored in much Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in of the literature. A. C. Grayling, Among Germany and Japan (New York: Walker & the Dead Cities, provides a Company, 2006), subjects the British and thoroughgoing assessment of US and American choice of area bombing in World War British strategic bombing (including II in Germany and Japan to rigorous scrutiny atomic bombing) through the lenses of from the perspectives of morality, international ethics and international law. Grayling’s law, and effectiveness. The terms area bombing, strategic bombing and indiscriminate premise is that Allied bombing which bombing refer to the wholesale destruction of “deliberately targeted German and large areas of cities, frequently with the Japanese civilian populations” and annihilation of the civilian population. By “claimed the lives of 800,000 civilian contrast tactical bombing is directed towomen, children and men,” “is nowhere discrete military and/or military-industrial near equivalent in scale of moral atrocity targets such as military bases and airfields, to of European Jewry, or bridges, and munitions factories. In practice, given technical limitations, bombs directed at the death and destruction all over the military targets frequently exacted heavy world for which Nazi and Japanese civilian tolls. I address the issues of state aggression was collectively responsible,”

22 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF a figure that he places at 25 million dead. present. See, for example, the introduction to He nevertheless concludes that theUS American Power and the New Mandarins (New and British killing of noncombatants “did York: Pantheon Books, 1966), pp. 4-5; Hegemony or Survival. America’s Quest for in fact involve the commission of wrongs” Global Dominance (New York: on a very large scale. Pp 5-6; 276-77. Books, 2003), pp, 2-13, 20-23;Failed States. Michael Bess, in Choices Under Fire. The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Moral Dimensions of World War II (New Democracy (New York: Metropolitan Books, York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 88-110, in a 2006), pp. 3-4 and passim. The Taylor quote is chapter on “Bombing Civilianfrom his Nuremberg and Vietnam: an American Populations,” asks this question: “did this Tragedy, cited in Chomsky, Failed States, p. 83. taint the victory with an indelible stain of John Dower offers trenchant comments on the innocent blood?” After reviewing both scales of justice inEmbracing Defeat, pp. 451-74; Richard H. Minear,Victors’ Justice: strategic and ethical issues, he concludes The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton: “There can be no excuse, in the end, for Princeton University Press, 1971). the practices of large-scale area bombing and firebombing of cities; these were [9] Quoted in Lindqvist,A History of atrocities, pure and simple. They were Bombing, p. 81. The US debate over the atrocities because the Anglo-Americans bombing of cities is detailed in Michael could definitely have won the war without Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: resorting to them.” It is necessary, in my The Creation of Armageddon (New view, to go further to inquire whether Haven, Press, 1987), pp. these would have constituted atrocities in 23-28, pp. 57-59. Ronald Schaffer, Wings circumstances in which the bombing, of Judgment: American Bombing in World presumably including atomic bombing, War II (New York: Oxford University were necessary for securing US victory. Press, 1985), pp. 20-30, I08-9. Gen. Billy Mitchell's contradictory message, which [6] Grayling, Among the Dead Cities, pp. 90-91. Grayling goes on to note the differentbecame Air Force doctrine in 1926, was experiences of survivors of the two types of that air attack "was a method of imposing bombing, particularly as a result of radiation will by terrorizing the whole population . symptoms from the atomic bomb. . . while conserving life and property to the greatest extent." Quoted in Sherry, p. [7] Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage, provides a useful overview of international efforts to 30. See also Conway-Lanz,Collateral protect noncombatants throughout history and Damage, p. 10. particularly since World War II. See also Timothy L. H. McCormack and Helen Durham, [10] Tami Davis Biddle, “Air Power,” in Michael “Aerial Bombardment of Civilians: The Current Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. International Legal Framework,” forthcoming. Shulman, The Laws of War. Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven: [8] The question of universality has been the Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 151-52. centerpiece of Noam Chomsky’s critique of the Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War conduct of the powers, above all theUnited 1939-1945 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), States, from his earliest political writings to the p. 26.

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[11] On Casablanca bombing see Charles B. Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca: Macdonald, World War II: The War Against Cornell University Press, 1996). The Germany and , (Army Historical Series, extensive American debate over Japan’s Office of the Chief of Military History), chapter surrender has paid little attention to the 22. firebombing, concentrating on the three The first major British success came atissues of the atomic bombs, the Russian Hamburg in 1943 when firebombing destroyed entry into the war, and US terms with large parts of the city and took 44,000 lives. respect to Emperor . Grayling traces British and German shift from tactical to strategic bombing in the early years [16] The most eloquent criticism was the of the war, Among the Dead Cities, pp. 31-76. writing of Vera Brittain. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities, pp. 180-86. In the midst of the [12] Max Hastings, Bomber Command: The Dresden debate, On March 28, 1945, Churchill Myth and Reality of the Strategic Bombing issued a minute questioning the area-bombing Offensive (New York: Dial Press, 1979), p. 139. strategy and raising the question of whether tactical bombing of key objectives was not [13] Sherry, Air Power, p. 260. With much U.S. more effective. The minute was withdrawn bombing already relying on radar, the following air force protests. Charles Webster distinction between tactical and strategic and Noble Frankland,The Strategic Air bombing had long been violated in practice. Offensive Against Germany 1939-45 ( London: The top brass, from George Marshall to Air HMSO, 1961), p. 112. Force chief Henry Arnold to Dwight Eisenhower, had all earlier given tacit approval [17] E. Bartlett Kerr, Flames Over Tokyo, for area bombing, yet no orders from on high spelled out a new bombing strategy. (New York: Fine, 1991), p. 145.

[14] Interview quoted in , [18] Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warware The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New Program,” from Hata Ikuhiko and Sase York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 593. Masanori, eds., Sekai Senso Hanzai Jiten (Encyclopedia of World War Crimes), Tokyo( : [15] Schaffer, Wings, p. 97; see also Bungei Shunju, 2002), tr. John Junkerman, Sherry, Air Power, pp. 260-63. Grayling Japan Focus,Nov 20, 2005 makes a compelling case for the failure of japanfocus.org/products/details/2194. area bombing of Germany to achieve its objective of breaking morale and causing [19] Kerr, Flames Over Tokyo, pp. 31-32, 41-44, heavy destruction of cities and military- 52, 71-74. For the October 1944 recommendations of the Committee of related industries, thereby forcing Operations Analysts of the Air Force for area surrender, Among the Dead Cities, pp. bombing, see pp. 83-88. 106-07. Robert Pape made a similar argument for Japan, stressing other [20] Michael Sherry, “The United States factors including naval blockade, threat and Strategic Bombing: From Prophecy of invasion, and the Soviet entry into the to Memory,” forthcoming; Cary Karacas, war as having far greater significance “Imagining Air Raids on Tokyo, than the fire bombing. Bombing to Win: 1930-1945,” paper presented at the

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Association for Asian Studies annual February destroyed most of the 530 meeting, Boston, March 23, 2007,pp. interceptors protecting the Kanto region. 2-5. Sherry traces other prophecies of Karacas, “Imagining Air Raids on Tokyo,” p. 27. In Japan in spring and summer 1945, as in nuclear bombing back to H.G. Wells 1913 virtually all subsequent bombing campaigns novel The World Set Free. Sherry makes conducted over the next six decades, theUS clear that prophecy has the capacity to ruled the sky with virtually no enemy capacity speak forcefully not only to proponents to destroy its bombers. but also to energize opponents of the envisaged future. [26] “Tokyo Under Bombardment, 1941-1945,” Bethanie Institute Bulletin No. 5, in [21] Sherry, Air Power, pp. 272-73, 404-05. General Headquarters Far East Command, Military Intelligence Section, War in Asia and [22] Cf. Stewart Udall’s discussion ofthe Pacific Vol. 12, Defense of the Homeland responsibility for the US shift to area bombing, and End of the War, ed., Donald Detwiler and centering on President Roosevelt, Secretary of Charles Burdick (New York, 1980); see also War Henry Stimson, and Air Force Secretary Karacas on the imaginative link between the Robert Lovett, and the difficulty ofTokyo earthquake and the bombing in the Unna documenting responsibility for the policy shift. Juzo novel. Sherry and Schaffer provide the most exhaustive study of the shift in U.S. bombing [27] Sherry, Air Power, p. 276. A detailed policy. photographic record, including images of scores of the dead, some burnt to a crisp and [23] United States Strategic Bombing distorted beyond recognition, others apparently Survey, Summary Report () serene in death, and of acres of the city (Washington: US GPO, 1946), Vol 1, p. flattened as if by an immense tornado, is found 16. in Ishikawa Koyo, Tokyo daikushu no zenkiroku (Complete Record of the Great Tokyo Air [24] Kerr, Flames Over Tokyo, pp. Attack) (Tokyo, 1992); Tokyo kushu o kiroku suru kai ed., Tokyo daikushu no kiroku (Record 102-03, 108-14, 134-38 . The limited of the Great Tokyo Air Attack) (Tokyo: success of repeated efforts to destroy the Sanseido, 1982), andDokyumento: Tokyo Nakajima Factory and other aircraft daikushu (Document: The Great Tokyo Air factories paved the way for the area Attack) (Tokyo: Yukeisha, 1968). bombing strategy. [28] The Survey’s killed-to-injured ratio of [25] Rhodes, Atomic Bomb, pp. 596-97; Wesley better than two to one was far higher than most Frank Craven and James Lea Gate, The Pacific: estimates for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima Matterhorn to Nagasaki June 1944 to August and Nagasaki where killed and wounded were 1945. Vol. 5, The Army Air Forces in World War approximately equal. If accurate, it is indicative II (: University of Chicago Press, 1953; of the immense difficulty in escaping for those 1983 Office of Air Force History imprint) pp. near the center of the Tokyo firestorm on that 609-13; Kerr, Flames Over Tokyo, p. 146-50. windswept night. The Survey’s kill ratio has, The low-flying planes, which could save fuel, however, been challenged by Japanese carry more bombs and better target their sites, researchers who found much higher kill ratios were vulnerable to attack by fighter-at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly when interceptors. However, US attacks in mid- one includes those who died of bomb injuries

25 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF months and years later. In my view, the SBS [29] Karacas, “Imagining Air Raids,” p. 22. estimates both exaggerate the killed to injured ratio and understate the numbers killed in the [30] Dokyumento. Tokyo daikushu, pp. 168-73. Tokyo raid. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic [31] John W. Dower, “Sensational Rumors, bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima Seditious Graffiti, and the Nightmares of the and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical and Social Thought Police,” in Japan in War and Peace Effects of the Atomic Bombing (New York: (New York: The New Press, 1993), p. 117. Basic Books, 1991), pp. 420-21; Cf. U.S. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Strategic Bombing Survey,Field Report Summary Report, Vol I, pp. 16-20. Covering Air Raid Protection and Allied [32] Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage, p. 1. Subjects Tokyo (n.p. 1946), pp. 3, 79. In contrast to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima [33] Kerr, Flames Over Tokyo, pp. and Nagasaki, which for fifty years have been the subject of intense research by Japanese, 337-38. Americans and others, the most significant [34] Two excellent complementary accounts of records of the Tokyo attack are those compiled important dimensions of the geopolitics and at the time by Japanese police and fire political economy of contemporary US empire departments. In the absence of the mystique of are Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire. the atomic bomb and the ongoing national and Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the global focus on that event, there was no (New York: Metropolitan Books, compelling reason to continue to monitor the 2004), and Michael T. Klare,Blood and Oil results of firebombing attacks on Japanese (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). cities following surrender. And neither the US military nor the Japanese government produced [35] The numbers killed, specifically the significant records of the destruction during numbers of noncombatants killed, in the the occupation. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars were greater, Survey study of Effects of Air Attack on Urban but each of those wars extended over many Complex Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama(n.p. years. 1947), p. 8, observes that Japanese police estimates of 93,076 killed and 72,840 injured in [36] Mark Selden, “American Nationalism and Tokyo air raids make no mention of the Asian Wars,” (in progress). numbers of people missing. Surely, too, many classified as injured died subsequently of their [37] Cf. Dower’s nuanced historical perspective wounds. In contrast to the monitoring of atomic on war and racism in American thought and bomb deaths over the subsequent six decades, praxis in War Without Mercy: Race and Power the Tokyo casualty figures at best record in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, deaths and injuries within days of the bombing 1986). In Year 501: The Conquest Continues at a time when the capacity of theTokyo (Boston: South End Press, 1993) and many military and police to compile records had been other works, Noam Chomsky emphasizes the overwhelmed. Many more certainly died in the continuities in Western ideologies that following weeks and months. The bombing of undergird practices leading to the annihilation Tokyo and other Japanese cities has attracted of entire populations in the course of colonial little scholarly attention either in Japan (with and expansionist wars over half a millennium the exception of local and local and more. studies of the bombing of particular cities) or internationally. [38] Geoffrey Best, War and Law Since

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1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) pp. 1993). Wide discrepancies remain with respect 180-81. to World War II casualties and deaths, notably in Asia. Cf. John Dower’s compilation and [39] See for example Robert Jay Lifton and discussion of the basic data,War Without Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America. Fifty Mercy, pp. 295-300, and “Race, Language and Years of Denial. (New York: Grossett/Putnam, War in Two Cultures,” in Japan in War and 1945), Parts II-IV; Conway-Lanz,Collateral Peace, p. 257. Damage, pp. 13-16. [43] Dower, , pp. 443-47; [40] Bombing would also be extended Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage, pp. 16-17. from cities to the countryside, as in the Agent Orange defoliation attacks that [44] Mark Selden,Nationalism, “ destroyed the forest cover and poisoned Historical Memory and Contemporary residents of sprayed areas of Vietnam. Conflicts in the Asia Pacific: the Yasukuni Phenomenon, Japan, and the United [41] I have explored issues ofJapan ’s China States”; Takahashi Tetsuya, "The war and the Chinese resistance inChina in National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine" Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited (Armonk: in Naoko Shimazu, ed., Nationalisms in M.E. Sharpe, 1995), and in Edward Friedman, Japan (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. Paul G. Pickowicz and Mark Selden,Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale 155-80; Caroline Rose, “The Battle for University Press, 1991). An insightfulHearts and Minds. Patriotic education in discussion of Japanese war crimes in the Japan in the 1990s and beyond,” in Pacific, locating the issues within aShimazu, pp. 131-54. The Japanese comparative context of atrocities committed by government has apologized to the the US, Germany, and other powers, is Yuki military comfort women (jugun ianfu), Tanaka’s Hidden Horrors: Japanese Crimes in World War II. Takashi Yoshida, The Making of most notably in the 1993 statement of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei. But in Japan, China and the United States (Oxford: contrast to Germany’s extensive state- Oxford University Press, 2006) examines the financed reparations to Nazi victims, the understanding of the Nanjing Massacre in each Japanese government dodged its country. Daqing Yang surveys the contentious responsibility by establishing a “private Chinese and Japanese literature on the rape of Nanjing in “A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The fund” to provide reparations of 200,000 Nanjing Atrocity as History,”Sino-Japanese yen to surviving comfort women. For this Studies, (November 1990), pp. 14-35. For reason, strong opposition to the program, additional studies of Japanese war atrocities particularly in South Korea and Taiwan and the search for justice for victims, see led the majority of survivors to reject the articles by Utsumi Aiko, William Underwood, compensation. Yoshiko Nozaki, Gavan McCormack, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Yuki Tanaka, Mark Selden and [45] Quoted in Noam Chomsky, “War on others at Japan Focus, http://japanfocus.org. Terror,” Amnesty International Lecture, [42] R.J.R. Bosworth, Explaining Auschwitz and College, January 18, 2006. Hiroshima. History Writing and the Second World War 1945-1990 (London: Routledge, [46] Collateral Damage, pp. 18-19.

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Conway-Lanz traces major US debates children and one adult who died. since 1945 centered on noncombatant deaths to show that the question of [54] Elizabeth Becker, “Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of intention, not the scale of noncombatant Abuse,” The New York Times, May 27, 2004. deaths caused by American actions, repeatedly trumped counter arguments in [55] “Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light policy debates over atomic and hydrogen on US Indiscriminate Bombing,” Walrus, bombs and the targeting of cities and December 7, 2006. villages for destruction. [56] Michael Sherry, The United States and [47] General Curtis LeMay, Oral History, 1966, Strategic Bombing: From Prophecy to cited in Marilyn Young, “Total War”,Memory,” forthcoming. conference paper, 2006. [57] Seymour Hersh, “Up in the Air [48] Young, “Total War.” Where is the Iraq war headed next?” The [49] Bruce Cumings, Origins of the New Yorker, Dec 5, 2005; Dahr Jamail, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, “Living Under the Bombs,” TomDispatch, 1990) v.2, p. 755. February 2, 2005; Michael Schwartz, “A

[50] Seymour M. Hersh,Chemical and Formula for Slaughter.The American Biological Warfare. America’s Hidden Arsenal, Rules of Engagement from the Air,” (New York: Anchor Books,1969), p. 18. TomDispatch, January 14, 2005.

[51] Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare, [58] Tom Barry, “The Militarization of pp. 28-32. See also Ronald B. Frankum Jr., Like Space and U.S. Global Dominance: the Rolling Thunder. The Air War inVietnam , China Connection” Japan Focus. 1964-1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 88-92. December 6, 2006.

[52] Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare, [59] Anthony Arnove, “Four Years Later... pp. 131-33. Hersh notes that the $60 million And Counting. Billboarding the Iraqi worth of defoliants and herbicides in the 1967 Disaster”, TomDispatch, March 18, 2007. Pentagon budget would have been sufficient to Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection. Is the defoliate 3.6 million acres if all were used Administration’s new policy benefiting optimally. our enemies in the war on terrorism?” [53] Hersh, Chemical and Biological The New Yorker March 3, 2007. Michael Warfare, pp. 134, 156-57. Canadian Dr. Schwartz, “Baghdad Surges into Hell. Alje Vennema described the symptoms of First Results from the President’s gas victims at Quang Ngai hospital where Offensive”, Tom Dispatch, February 12, he worked in 1967, including two2007.

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