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By Root 1109 0

’s hour of decision…Results of the incendiary attacks have been tremendous. The first areas assigned were selected on the basis of a compromise between industrial importance and susceptibility to fire. With a greater respect we now have for our fire-making ability and the greater weight we are able to lay down, these new areas which have just been sent to you represent more nearly the top industrial areas. They also appear to be most susceptible to fire attack…If we are successful in destroying these areas in a reasonable time, we can only guess what the effect will be upon the Japanese. Certainly their war-making ability will have been seriously curtailed. Possibly they may lose their taste for more war. I am convinced that the XXIst Bomber Command, more than any other service or weapon, is in a position to do something decisive…You and your command have the respect, admiration and unqualified confidence of this headquarters. Keep up the good work.

Today, when many people in the West as well as in Japan recoil from the horrors inflicted by the 1945 bomber offensive, Norstad’s words evoke a chill which is intensified by LeMay’s post-war rationalisation of what his command did: “We were going after military targets581. No point in slaughtering civilians for the mere sake of slaughter…All you had to do was visit one of those targets after we’d roasted it, and see the ruins of a multitude of tiny houses, with a drill press sticking up through the wreckage…The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions of war…men, women, and children. We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had to be done.” As for the aircrew, few were troubled by the carnage they wreaked upon Japan. “I don’t think we thought much582 about it,” said Lt. Philip True. “At briefings, we were told we were bombing industrial areas, and that a lot of sub-assembly was located in surrounding residential areas. I don’t think anybody enjoyed it. It was just a job that had to be done. By the time it was over I was ready to go back to school.” True was indeed almost a schoolkid—as were they all. Some post-war critics have adopted the absurdly unrealistic view that aircrew should have refused to participate in firebombing. In truth, if the destruction of Japan’s cities and massacre of its civilians were deemed inappropriate objectives for the USAAF, the onus rested squarely upon the media and the political leadership of the U.S.A. to demand that the campaign be prosecuted differently. They never did so.

After 1945, neither LeMay personally nor the air force as an institution welcomed the overwhelming evidence that Japanese industry was already being strangled to death by the American naval blockade when B-29 bombs began to fall upon it; that aerial bombardment in the last five months of war contributed little towards the destruction of Japan’s war-making powers, though much towards punishing the Japanese people for their nation’s aggression, if this was an appropriate occupation for the USAAF. As so often in the Second World War, especially in Asia, a campaign evolved out of synchronisation with the pace of events elsewhere, having missed a decisive place in the context of the struggle. If U.S. bombers had been able to strike hard at Japan in 1942 or 1943, even 1944, they might have achieved a dramatic impact upon Japan’s industrial capability. As it was, however, by the time the Twentieth Air Force achieved the strength and competence to inflict major damage on the industrial cities of the enemy, Japan’s war-making powers were in terminal decline from blockade.

Intelligence was a cardinal weakness of the B-29 campaign. Astonishingly little was known about the Japanese economy, industry, its choke points and weaknesses. In Albert Speer’s anxiety to please his captors in May 1945, the Nazi armaments minister explained to American interrogators how they might bomb Japan more effectively than they had Germany. He stressed the importance of attacking the transport net, together with basic industries