Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History

301 Pages·2009·1.106 MB·English

by  Yuki Tanaka, Marilyn B. Young

HISTORY $19.95 U.S. edited by “A vividly detailed and profoundly troubling history of war fought from the air.”
Yuki —frida berrigan,New America Foundation
“The powerful moral criticisms raised by these searching essays
Tanaka
extend from the bombing of civilians to war itself.” and
MarilynB.
—robert jay lifton, author of Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima
Young
“A careful examination of one of the great horrors of modern times. . . . b
Common to all the essays is an unmistakable and unspoken core of moral
outrage, buttressed by meticulous research and unassailable logic.” o
—howard zinn
m
“A cogent case for reassessing the effectiveness of air campaigns.”
—Japan Times
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bom bi ng
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FROM THE BRITISH BOMBING OF IRAQ civilians
a twentieth-century history
IN THE EARLY 1920sTO THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN
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AND IRAQ, THIS BOLD COLLECTION BRINGS HISTORY TO twentieth-

bear on the use of indiscriminate bombing, examining the fundamental questions of how century
history
justifying mass killing originated and why it continues to be employed as a compelling
military strategy. With major new arguments and incisive historical analysis by distin- c
guished scholars from Japan, the United States, and Europe, Bombing Civiliansis a pow-
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erful examination of the devastating effects of aerial bombing and the morality of war. edited by
v Yuki Tanaka
yuki tanakais Research Professor at Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City
University. He is the author of Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. i and
marilyn b. youngis a professor of history at New York University. She has been a l Marilyn B. Young
Guggenheim Fellow and is the author of numerous books, including The Vietnam
Wars, ‒. i
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n
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www.thenewpress.com
Front cover (clockwise from top): Anonymous, Hiroshima, 1945; Anonymous, explosion,
France, 1890; Anoymous, London, 1940; Ryan Thomas, car explosion, 2008. Back cover:
Anonymous, Dresden, 1945; Anonymous, Hiroshima, 1945. All photos are either in the
THE NEW PRESS public domain or used under a Creative Commons license.
Cover design by Pollen, New York THE NEW PRESS
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Bombing Civilians
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Also edited by Marilyn B. Young
from The New Press
Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past
(with Lloyd C. Gardner)
The New American Empire: A 21st Century Teach-In on U.S. Foreign Policy
(with Lloyd C. Gardner)
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Bombing Civilians
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A Twentieth-Century History
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edited by yuki tanaka and marilyn b. young 22
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12 Compilation © 2009 by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young
Individual essays © 2009 by each author
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14 All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the publisher.
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16 Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.
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18 Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2009
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York
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20 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
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Bombing civilians : a twentieth-century history / edited by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young.
22 p. cm.
23 Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59558-363-5 (hbk.)
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1. Military history, Modern—20th century. 2. Civilian war casualties—History—20th century.
25 3. Bombing, Aerial—History—20th century. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Casualties. 5. World War,
1939–1945—Aerial operations, American. I. Young, Marilyn Blatt. II. Tanaka, Toshiyuki, 1949–
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D431.B66 2008
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29 The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large,
commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry.
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The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain,
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Composition by NK Graphics
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Printed in the United States of America
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In memory of Erick Markusen, the pioneer scholar of genocide studies who passed
away before completing his contribution to this book
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Yuki Tanaka 1
1. British “Humane Bombing” in Iraq during the Interwar Era
Yuki Tanaka 8
2. The Bombing Campaigns in World War II: The European
Theater
Ronald Schaffer 30
3. The Bombing War in Germany, 2005–1940:Back to the
Future?
Robert G. Moeller 46
4. A Forgotten Holocaust: U.S. Bombing Strategy, the Destruction
of Japanese Cities, and the American Way of War from the
Pacific War to Iraq
Mark Selden 77
5. Were the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Justified?
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa 97
6. Strategic Bombing of Chongqing by Imperial Japanese Army and
Naval Forces
Tetsuo Maeda 135
7. Bombing Civilians from the Twentieth to the Twenty-first Centuries
Marilyn B. Young 154
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viii CONTENTS
8. The United States and Strategic Bombing: From Prophecy
to Memory
Michael Sherry 175
9. Bombing and the Morality of War
C.A.J. Coady 191
10. Aerial Bombardment of Civilians: The Current International
Legal Framework
Timothy L.H. McCormack and Helen Durham 215
Notes 240
About the Contributors 273
Index 276
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INTRODUCTION
Yuki Tanaka
Suddenly
There was a brilliant white-hot flash.
Buildings crumbled,
Fire blazed,
Smoke swirled all around,
Wires dangled everywhere,
And a writhing mass of humanity fled for safety
This passage from a poem by Hiroshima victim Sadako Kurihara graphi-
cally depicts the horror experienced not only by A-bomb victims but by all
who have suffered air raid attacks: fire, smoke, flight. Yet the attackers,
hundreds of meters in the air above, have little sense of what is happening
down below. For the bomber crews, the people on the ground are entirely
abstract; they are targets. By contrast, the experience of their victims is of
the most terrible concrete reality. The sharp juxtaposition of abstract and
concrete is a phenomenon unique to aerial bombing.
The premium placed on aerial bombing in modern warfare owes much
tothe relative safety of the attackers and the complete vulnerability of the
victims. The psychological remoteness of pilots and bombardiers from the
reality of the horror on the ground is well described by Charles Lind-
bergh, who flew the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic, in 1927.
Lindbergh also flew combat missions in the Pacific theater as a consultant
for the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, General Henry Arnold,
during World War II:
You press a button and death flies down. One second, the bomb hanging harm-
lessly in your racks, completely under your control. The next it is hurtling
down through the air and nothing in your power can revoke what you have
done....How can there be writhing, mangled bodies? How can this air around