[Peace-discuss] Bombings Worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima - Laurence Vance

[E. Wayne Johnson]

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Laurence Vance is a believer and Bible Scholar who views
the pro-war Religious Right narrowly and has made many
excellent expositions against the War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His excellent speech to the FFF can be viewed athttp://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/42
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Bombings Worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima*
by Laurence M. Vance, August 14, 2009

The world knows all too well about the atomic bombs the United States 
dropped on Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945 ("Little Boy"), and on 
Nagasaki on Thursday, August 9 ("Fat Man"). "Dropping the bombs ended 
the war," said President Harry Truman.

They may have ended the war, but they did not end the bombing of Japan.

On August 14, 1945, /after/ the two atomic bombs had been dropped on 
Japan, and /after/ Emperor Hirohito had agreed to surrender because "the 
enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy 
many innocent lives and do incalculable damage," General Henry Harley 
"Hap" Arnold, to boost his already over-inflated ego (he was made a 
five-star general in 1944), undertook a completely unnecessary act of 
terror from the skies over Japan that had never before been seen. In 
their 1953 book /The Army Air Forces in World War II,/ Wesley F. Craven 
and James L. Cate state:

    Arnold wanted as big a finale as possible, hoping that USASTAF could
    hit the Tokyo area in a 1,000-plane mission: the Twentieth Air Force
    had put up 853 B-29's and 79 fighters on 1 August, and Arnold
    thought the number could be rounded out by calling on Doolittle's
    Eighth Air Force. Spaatz still wanted to drop the third atom bomb on
    Tokyo but thought that battered city a poor target for conventional
    bombing; instead, he proposed to divide his forces between seven
    targets. Arnold was apologetic about the unfortunate mixup on the
    11th and, accepting Spaatz' amendment, assured him that his orders
    had been "co-ordinated with my superiors all the way to the top."
    The teleconference ended with a fervid "Thank God" from Spaatz.
    Kennedy had the Okinawa strips tied up with other operations so that
    Doolittle was unable to send out his VHB's. From the Marianas, 449
    B-29's went out for a daylight strike on the 14th, and that night,
    with top officers standing by at Washington and Guam for a
    last-minute cancellation, 372 more were airborne. Seven planes
    dispatched on special bombing missions by the 509th Group brought
    the number of B-20's to 828, and with 186 fighter escorts
    dispatched, USASTAF passed Arnold's goal with a total of 1,014
    aircraft. There were no losses, and before the last B-29 returned
    President Truman announced the unconditional surrender of Japan.

This was the largest bombing raid in history. Yet, many timelines of 
World War II do not even list this event as having occurred.

But although this was the largest bombing raid, it was not the 
deadliest. In fact, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were not even the 
deadliest. Because high-altitude precision bombing was viewed as not 
effective enough, the Army Air Force began using incendiary attacks 
against Japanese cities. After months of studies, planning, and several 
incendiary bombing test runs, Tokyo was firebombed on the night of March 
9, 1945, by low-flying B-29's with increased bomb loads. Seventeen 
hundred tons of bombs were dropped in a densely populated area (an 
average of 103,000 people per square mile) of twelve square miles. The 
result was just what one would expect: as many as 100,000 dead, over 
40,000 wounded, over 1,000,000 made homeless, over 267,000 buildings 
destroyed. The water boiled in some small canals because of the intense 
heat. This was the most destructive air attack in history. It killed 
more people than the dropping of an atomic bomb.

The Tokyo firebombing raid was followed by larger ones against Nagoya, 
Osaka, and Kobe, some of Japan's largest cities. Then Nagoya was hit 
again. All in all, 1,595 sorties had flown in 10 days, dropping over 
9,300 toms of bombs. Japanese cities --- large and small --- were 
continually hit with conventional and incendiary bombs through the end 
of the war.

But the bombing of Japanese cities was not war, it was wholesale murder. 
How, then, does this act of terrorism continue to be defended almost 
sixty-five years later? Simple. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In fact, 
nothing U.S. forces did to Japan during the war matters because of Pearl 
Harbor.

But even if FDR didn't have prior knowledge of the Japanese attack on 
Pearl Harbor and even if the United States didn't provoke Japan into 
firing the first shot (See Robert Stinnett's excellent book /Day of 
Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor,/ which persuasively argues 
that he did have prior knowledge and did provoke Japan into firing the 
first shot), Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor still doesn't justify 
bombing the civilian population of Japan. Why is it that the 9/11 
attacks on America are considered acts of terrorism but a 1000-plane 
bombing raid on Tokyo after the dropping of two atomic bombs isn't?

Pearl Harbor or no Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Tokyo on August 14, 
1945, was a despicable act --- worse than the firebombing of Tokyo, 
worse than Hiroshima, and worse than Nagasaki --- because it was so 
unnecessary.

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