Download 1945 Tokyo Firebombing Left Legacy of Terror, Pain

1945 Tokyo Firebombing Left Legacy of Terror, Pain
by Joseph Coleman (excerpt)
The Tokyo firebombing has long been overshadowed by the U.S. atomic attacks on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki which preceded the Japanese surrender that ended World War II the following August.
But the burning of the capital, which resulted in more immediate deaths than either of the nuclear
bombings, stands as a horrifying landmark in the history of warfare on noncombatants.
More than 300 B-29 "Superfortress" bombers dropped nearly a half-million M-69 incendiary
cylinders over Tokyo that night and early morning, destroying some 16 square miles of the city. The
attack, coming a month after a similar raid on Dresden, Germany, brought the mass incineration of
civilians to a new level in a conflict already characterized by unprecedented bloodshed.
The official death toll was some 83,000, but historians generally agree that victims
unaccounted for bring the figure to around 100,000 — overwhelmingly civilians. It is widely
considered to be the most devastating air raid in history.
While critics in Japan and elsewhere decry such attacks as war crimes, others say the Tokyo
assault took place against a backdrop of the increasing brutality of total war fueled by the militarism
of the Axis powers.
The German air attack on Guernica in the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese bombing of
Chungking, China, (now known as Chongqing) in the 1930s are cited as early examples of
indiscriminate urban air raids — a trend that greatly expanded in World War II.
"At this stage, everybody had been burning down cities," said Thomas Searle, a historian at the
Airpower Research Institute, at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. "The Americans certainly
weren't out of step in that sense."
The Tokyo attack was aimed in part at demolishing Japanese morale and hastening a
surrender. Planners also wanted to wipe out small factories and drive away their employees as a way
of choking the economy.
The American decision to go after civilians emerged from the failure of precision bombings
against traditional military targets, and
accompanied significant advances in technology
and bombing tactics. The B-29, for instance,
gave the United States greater range and
firepower, while innovations such as low-altitude
nighttime attacks multiplied the potential for
terror and destruction.
That terror was apocalyptic.
The M-69s, which released 100-foot
streams of fire upon detonating, sent flames
rampaging through densely packed wooden
homes. Superheated air created a wind that
sucked victims into the flames and fed the
WAR CRIMES: US TERROR ATTACK ON TOKYO
This 1945 photo shows the industrial section of Tokyo along the Sumida River. Some
twisting infernos. Asphalt boiled in the 1,80016 square miles of the city were razed by incendiary and other strikes by U.S.
warplanes March 9-10, 1945. The Tokyo attack was aimed in part at demolishing
degree heat. With much of the fighting-age male
Japanese morale and hastening a surrender. Planners also wanted to wipe out small
factories and drive away their employees as a way of choking the economy. (AP
population at the war front, women, children and
Photo)
the elderly struggled in vain to battle the flames
or flee.
Survivors say Japan has been slow to come to terms with the bombing's place in history, in
part because of the reticence of survivors.
THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN
from The Internationalist and Spartacus Schools
Hitler was notorious for sending his Luftwaffe (air force) to annihilate Rotterdam, Holland in
May 1940, killing 30,000 people in an effort to bomb the Dutch population into submission; for his
bombing of the English cathedral town of Coventry later that year, which killed 500 in a single tenhour raid; and for the London Blitz, lasting from September 1940 to May 1941, in which over 20,000
civilians were killed.
The German military developed this into the doctrine of “Schrecklichkeit” (frightfulness),
which was defined by Chris Cook’s Dictionary of Historical Terms (1983) as the “deliberate policy
of committing atrocities to subdue a subject people.” This Nazi policy was the direct antecedent of
the Pentagon’s air war doctrine, “Shock and Awe,” which was precisely intended to terrorize the
Iraqi population into submission.
In 1941 Charles Portal of the British Air Staff advocated that entire cities and towns should be
bombed. Portal claimed that this would quickly bring about the collapse of civilian morale in
Germany. Air Marshall Arthur Harris agreed and when he became head of RAF Bomber Command
in February 1942, he introduced a policy of area bombing
(known in Germany as terror bombing) where entire cities
and towns were targeted.
One tactic used by the Royal Air Force and the
United States Army Air Force was the creation of
firestorms. This was achieved by dropping incendiary
bombs, filled with highly combustible chemicals such as
magnesium, phosphorus or petroleum jelly (napalm), in
clusters over a specific target. After the area caught fire,
the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and
rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from
the outside and people were sucked into the fire.
In 1945, Arthur Harris decided to create a firestorm
in the medieval city of Dresden. He considered it a good
target as it had not been attacked during the war and was
virtually undefended by anti-aircraft guns. The population
of the city was now far greater than the normal 650,000
due to the large numbers of refugees fleeing from the
advancing Red Army.
On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters
bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF
sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack.
Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to
count the number of victims. Recent research suggests that 35,000 were killed but some German
sources have argued that it was over 100,000.