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US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Volume 5 | Issue 5 | Article ID 2414 | May 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & 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 United States has been a major from World War II to Iraq [*] actor in important wars? The issues have particular salience in an epoch whose Mark 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 technologies of mass destructionfrequently neglected. associated with air power, notably the Strategic Bombing and International B-29 bomber, napalm and the atomic Law bomb. An estimated 50 to 70 million people lay dead in its wake. In a sharp Bombs had been dropped from the air as reversal of the pattern of World War I early as 1849 on Venice (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 technology in World War II and after? Above all, how 1 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF 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 Japanese war crimes 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 military 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 2 5 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF Nagasaki. A.C. Grayling explains the the contradiction between international different responses to firebombing 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 (Nuremberg and Tokyo actually suffer from it; for whether it is Tribunals and successive Geneva 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 Dresden or Hamburg did Tokyo Tribunals clearly articulated the not feel.” [6] principle of universality, the Tribunals, both held in cities that had been If others, notably Germany, 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 city 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, France 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 area bombardment of Rotterdam 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 Cologne, Hamburg the most part confined to the axisand others, Harris pursued this strategy. powers. Then in August 1940, 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 Europe 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 July 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
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