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

[C. G. Estabrook]

An excellent and accurate article.  Chomsky is one of the few contemporary 
American political writers regularly to mention these facts.  See, e.g.,

	www.chomsky.info/articles/199508--.htm
	www.chomsky.info/articles/20050716.pdf

E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> *
> 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 at http://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/42
> *
> 
> *
> *****
> 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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