On March 10, 1945, 300 American bombers continue to drop almost 2,000 tons of incendiaries on Tokyo, Japan, in a mission that had begun the previous day. The attack destroyed large portions of the Japanese capital and killed 100,000 civilians.
In the closing months of the war, the United States had turned to incendiary bombing tactics against Japan, also known as “area bombing,” in an attempt to break Japanese morale and force a surrender. The firebombing of Tokyo was the first major bombing operation of this sort against Japan.
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Early in the morning, the B-29s dropped their bombs of napalm and magnesium incendiaries over the packed residential districts along the Sumida River in eastern Tokyo. The conflagration quickly engulfed Tokyo’s wooden residential structures, and the subsequent firestorm replaced oxygen with lethal gases, superheated the atmosphere, and caused hurricane-like winds that blew a wall of fire across the city. The majority of the 100,000 who perished died from carbon monoxide poisoning and the sudden lack of oxygen, but others died horrible deaths within the firestorm, such as those who attempted to find protection in the Sumida River and were boiled alive, or those who were trampled to death in the rush to escape the burning city. As a result of the attack, 10 square miles of eastern Tokyo were entirely obliterated, and an estimated 250,000 buildings were destroyed.
During the next nine days, U.S. bombers flew similar missions against Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. In August, U.S. atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally forced Japan’s hand.
Incendiary bombing of Japanese cities was the work of Curtis LeMay. The B29, operating out of Iwo Jima, had proven ineffective. It was simply not possible to hit targets using unguided bombs from 35,000 ft. It was impossible in 1945 and it is impossible today. Furthermore B29 losses were unacceptably high. The Japanese had adapted some of their better performing fighters to operate at that altitude. They could not chase, but they could attack head-to-head quite effectively.
LeMay knew that there was a gap in Japanese air defenses between low level machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery, at around 3,000 ft elevation. The idea was to go in at night and at this low level. Japanese cities were congested and the commercial and residential areas were built of wood and paper. Far more destruction was caused by the inferno’s from these attacks than by the two atomic bombs. LeMay said himself that if Japan had won the war he would have been hanged as a war criminal.
A couple of other facts. The other great butcher of innocent people, Robert McNamara worked with LeMay in the planning. He used that experience to later slaughter millions of Vietnamese people.
Also, flying at virtual tree top level was made possible due to the fact that the country was defenseless at that point. They were shooting fish in a barrel.
When you fight a war, you fight it to win and do what ever is necessary to win it.
If you don’t, you lose.
We won, they lost.
Get over it.
The USA won the war.
But Japan won the peace.
The USA is now on the verge of becoming a turd-world country.
Much of our land looks similar to Mexico FYI.
Now go to Hiroshima today–it is almost like a Star Trek City.
Go to Detroit today–it looks like Hiroshima circa August 1945.
Japanese products completely dominate every facet of our lives here today.
While we produce little or nothing of value that the Japanese markets desire (shitty quality).
While (as we watch and gloat over the reruns of WWII documentaries on the “hero channel”) we pissed away all the gains made post WWII and we have become a debtor nation to Japan to the tune of about 1 trillion dollars.
How did that victory work out for you? –huh?!
The reason for our decline is not the winning of the war, or the way we did it, but rather, the leftist progressive take-over of this country, starting even before the war.
Would it be impolitic to point out that the Japanese haven’t had millions upon millions of largely unskilled, low-IQ immigrants pouring into their orderly, homogeneous country like the USA has for the last 60 years or so? Could that have anything to do with the outcome?
Borders, language, culture.
No, it would not.
There are Youtube videos speaking of this. I suggest Black Pigeon, a white American who married a Japanese woman, has mixed-race, Japanese-born children, and who speaks much about this issue (and about the Muslim migrants in Europe).
Japan is extremely restrictive when it comes to immigration. Japan still makes it hard for 3rd, 4th, generation Koreans born in Japan to acquire full Japanese citizenship – and Koreans are genetically and culturally very close to the Japanese. How welcoming would such a culture be to Syrians, Afghanis, or black Africans?
“When you fight a war, you fight it to win and do what ever is necessary to win it.”
I believe you should have used past tense. In a war of thermonuclear, biological, bacterial (and God knows what else floating around above us) weapons, following us “winning” a war will likely not end with a ticker tape parade but instead total silence.
There is only one thing worse than brutal destruction and killing in war. Losing.
I’m posting an article about how it was his fellow Republicans who took down Senator Joe McCarthy despite his nearly always being correct about the people he called out.Some things never change,as the Never Trumpers would have probably been the ones to go after McCarthy.
I’m posting it here because the firebombings and atomic bombs should not have been necessary.More importantly though is that many of the brutal battles of the Pacific should not have been necessary-how many thousands of our guys were killed/maimed unnecessarily?
Japan made many backdoor overtures to the US to try and negotiate a surrender,beginning in early 1944.They were either concealed from Roosevelt or twisted before presentation to him by the communist agents who were his aides.
http://personalliberty.com/when-republicans-moved-to-protect-communists-in-government/
Even after all the civilianls deaths Japan still refused to surrender.T hey were going to fight to the last man like they did on the smaller islands.The Army estimated it would lose Over a million soldiers trying to take the island of Japan.Droping those bombs probably saved the lives of millions of young men and women.Both allied and Japanese.
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” – President Dwight Eisenhower and 5-star US Army General, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” – Admiral William D. Healy, Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, highest-ranking active duty US military officer during World War II
“The war would have been over in two weeks…. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.” – General Curtis LeMay, shortly after the bombings
Thank you The Mod Chron for helping shed light on the A-bomb bullshit story sold to us by the same people who turned their backs on the Pearl Harbor raid. Here’s more from actual experts who knew best:
[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .
[I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
Admiral William D. Leahy, the President’s Chief of Staff–and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K.
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: “The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . .”] Adm Chester Nimitz (the hero of the battle of Midway).
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. Adm. Wm Bull Halsey
Eisenhower was even more specific in his memoirs, writing that when he was informed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson the bomb was about to be used against Japan “…I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives…”
ALL WARS START AND END WITH A BULLSHIT STORY.
Truman was wrong about a great many things, but on the atomic bombs, he was correct, and I applaud him for that. They saved a great many lives on both sides, and shortened he war by maybe as much as a year. It also gave a clear demonstration of the new terrible weapon that eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And, whether it (A-bomb) was used or not, it spread to other nations needlessly due to Progressive thinking and actions by those who made it.
Wrong.
The Japanese had been sending peace feelers for months and wanted to negotiate. Their senior leadership knew that the war was lost. The one event that jolted them into finally surrendering wasn’t even the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather, the Soviet entry into the war 2 days after Hiroshima.
There’s no denial that an invasion would’ve been bloody. But the standard narrative is that there were no other options besides nuking Japan and an invasion. American recalcitrance to accept the one Japanese condition – preservation of the emperor and protection for him from war crimes tribunals – was what kept Japan going. To see Hirohito tried/executed would have revulsed them en masse as witnessing Christ crucified would have caused horror to the eyes of the Americans of 1945.
In 1945, technology was primitive. It sometimes took a day or two or more for news to reach Tokyo. And by summer 1945, there were only a handful of Japanese cities with over 30,000 people which had not been struck by U.S. bombing. So for a city to be suddenly struck with a new and unusual, unknown weapon, with thousands dying, wasn’t necessarily “news” to the Japanese leadership. They knew hundreds of thousands of their compatriots had perished in aerial bombing campaigns before, in Tokyo and elsewhere.
Eventually, with black rain and other odd results, the leadership took notice. But that was many days afterwards, after Hirohito spoke on radio – and after Stalin kept his promise to enter the Pacific War 3 days after Nazi Germany surrendered. Uncle Joe kept his promise to the specific day.
Let there be no mistake: the Japanese were terrified of the Soviets, and their troops, which had wreaked havoc against Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Tung’s Nationalist and Communist armies, fell like withered plants before the onslaught of the Red Army. This was the final stimulus which caused Japan to throw in the towel.
Well, let’s see, they did not flinch after the first drop, and took several days after the second, so I don’t for a minute think that they were anywhere near giving up.
I’m not sure what killing Japanese civilians accomplished other than taking their lives. Had Japan or Germany firebombed U.S. cities, America would have never forgiven them. Pearl Harbor was a sneaky act, but at the very least, Pearl Harbor was a military installation.
Not that the Japanese were angels; they committed a litany of barbaric acts in China, and they weren’t above bombing cities (Shanghai).
World War II, like all wars, was a conflict in which nobody was able to claim moral superiority.
As above posters have noted, the atomic bombs had nothing to do with ending the war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared conventional bombing and thus were virgin targets. The purpose of the atomic bombings were to study the effects. This is also why two different bomb designs were used.
Speaking of Japan……………
Did anyone catch the story in the last couple days about the wild boars that have taken over the Fukushima area in the last few years? They look healthy as a horse and are being rounded up by regulah workers (Not in radiation suits), caged or shot then carried off in pickup trucks.
The accounts of this states that they are clearing them out so PEOPLE CAN MOVE BACK IN to the houses near the power plant. WTF? Not two weeks ago they said the radiation was SO HIGH it was (killing) the robots they were sending in to the area. AGAIN WTF?
Things that make you go Hmmmmm.
Pit bull attacks became a plague of sorts in the 80’s. Locally, we also saw a rash of murder-suicides. It seems one M-S triggers another. It isn’t always the case but I guess it is true of most cases that financial stress triggers the event.
Mutually Assured Destruction used to be a deterrent for atomic warfare. Trumpy declared recently that we ought to fight wars to win (instead of what we usually fight for: containment, suppression, domination, direction, etc.) Winning at all costs is a justification for total war. Perhaps America’s financial difficulties suddenly make nuclear suicide palatable. The rich have their fully stocked nuclear bunkers in salt mines, the rest of us will only be collateral damage.
There are ideas whose time comes along. Enough Americans have expressed a wish for annihilation in the form of a giant meteor that TPTB are guessing the time for nuclear exchange is ripe.
https://youtu.be/64nCCjonKW0