Curtis LeMay Starts Firebombing Tokyo - War Against Humanity 123
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- Опубликовано: 21 авг 2024
- Curtis LeMay orders his B-29s to begin the firebombing of Japanese cities. This begins a campaign that will destroy the Japanese economy but leave hundreds of thousands dead. Meanwhile, the radicalisation of Japanese society continues at all levels as the Kamikaze suicide-pilots attack Allied warships and school-children build vengeance weapons.
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Daniel Weiss
0:50 Recap of the air war over Japan
3:04 First B-29 missions from the Marianas
5:23 Weakness of Japanese air and civil defence
08:56 Radicalisation of Japanese society under the bombs
10:35 Kamikazes
13:40 America changes leadership and strategy
17:29 Conclusion
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Even as this war gets closer and close to its inevitable end, the scale of death and destruction continues to grow. Soon, Spartacus will cover the renewed Allied bombing of Germany which now reaches greater levels of ferocity than ever before.
The image of Tokyo being firebombed reminds me of an episode of Sailor Moon in 1992 where a villain named Jadite threatens to set the entire city on fire if he is not met face to face by the protagonists, showing a vision to the millions of people there of what that would look like in graphic detail. He is promptly met with a sword through the ribs by Venus IIRC. It's been a while since I saw that.
I recently read a comment on another channel that was talking about the frontier myth and a Japanese user said that Americans are inferior to Japanese it made me wonder if the user forgot that the US destroyed a lot of their cities not to mention, we destroyed most of their Navy and Air Force
I would love that Spartacus and Indy could do a special about the attempted coup made by officers of the Japanese army that tried to avoid the emperor's speech of accepting the unconditional surrender to the Allies
Thanks for your work!! Curtis Le May was an abominable person. He wanted to use nuclear weapons against Cuba during the October Crisis of 1962. Thank God he never got a hold of the nuclear codes.
After watching this video I'm going to need a detox from an overdose of virtue signaling.
what a lot of people forget, do not understand or know is that the Big 5 firebombing raids (was one raid pulled so they should have been 6 raids?) over Japan killed more people and damaged more area of land then the two atomic bombs that was dropped on Japan.
While true some people use that as a justification for dropping the atom bombs and killing more civilians with no military value. Which is obviously crazy.
That's why the Soviet entry into the war and the Americans agreeing to let the emperor stay in place under American command were much bigger reasons for the Japanese surrender than the A bombs. It didn't really make a difference to Japan how many American planes it took to destroy a city. The city was still destroyed the same.
Much more; you are correct!
@@shawngilliland243 still not enough
My father was assigned to Saipan in the 500 th Bomb group. Two B-29's that were "destroyed" in the Japanese air raids were rebuild by combining parts from the other destroyed planes.
Mostly out of spite.
Thank you to Dad for his service. Tim UK.
That's not a good thing to do .
I mean seriously, sometimes these parts attract things which are beyond understanding of science.
Not gonna lie, this sounds like an impressive feat if you ask me! -TimeGhost Ambassador
You know, You could end a description of any event at this point in the war with "they did it mostly out of spite".
The most heavily armed B-17 serving in the PTO, "Old 666", was also built largely of scrounged parts from other Fortresses too heavily damaged to carry on. The men of "Old 666" were the most highly decorated aircrew in American history.
When I was at The Citadel, one of my history instructors once said when you unleash total war on your enemy, expect him to bring it back upon you with all he has in his destructive arsenal.
Exactly. If you can't face the whirlwind, don't sew the winds of war.
so 9/11was welldeserved
Well duh.
I could have told you that when I was 12 years old.
☮
@@McRocket oh yeah? Well what would your 12 year old self say about being an condescending douche bag?
A U.S. Colonel named Glenn Frazier (who I met) was captured in Bataan in 1942 and spend three years as a Japanese POW in Japan. He has a book Hell's Guest about it. He saw the bombing raids, including one that he said killed 400 Japanese workers in a factory next to the POW camp. One of the interesting parts of the book is that after Japan's surrender, the American POWs were left in limbo. The American ex-POWs were just milling around with nothing to do but wait a few weeks for our army to arrive to occupy northern Japan. Frasier and a few others didn't want to wait, so they boarded a Japanese civilian train and rode side by side with the Japanese passengers and discharged soldiers through all the burned-out cities until they got to the American headquarters in Tokyo. Neither he or the Japanese showed any animosity toward each other on that long ride through a bombed-out country. The war was over and the countries were at peace. Everything changed on a dime as soon as the Japanese surrendered. Humans are ferocious against each other in war, but when peace returns, so does the innate respect we have for one another.
Sadly in Europe this was not the case. The Emperor surrendered. The Fuhrer committed suicide.
Onve the Allies knew the price of Japanese surrender was the the continuity of office of the Emperor
and once the imperial military accepted that a route to personal survival and honour existed their admission of "bad advice" and capitulation soon followed.
No bomb was needed. theoretically.
That's what humans are. Can go from savagery to to refinement and back again so fast..
we're all by nature cavemen, living in the 21st century. Hardly surprising if we struggle.
Thankfully peace is our natural state of being.
I read this book! Great book! He also demanded a Japanese officer give him his katana. He literally said "give me your sword. You have To. You are defeated"
And the officer did! He weeped, cried and gave up his sword
@@mailman35419 Several other things before and after the war come to mind too: How he joined the Army to escape being killed by a bar owner whose place he trashed riding through it on a motorcycle; how he slowed the Japanese advance through the Philippines in 1942; and how he succeeded after the war in doing everything from trucking to running a gift shop to renting motorcycles. But the recurring nightmares of being in Japanese captivity gave him screaming fits at night. Several of his wives left him because of the lingering scars on his personality. He didn't get over it until decades later when he forgave the Japanese for what they did to torture him and other American captives. The horrors of war continue long after the shooting stops. I think I'll reread the book, now that you brought it vividly to life in my mind with the Japanese officer surrender.
@@fortpark-wd9sx why 1972?
My Seabee dad did the surveying for the ramps and atomic bomb pits on Tinian. He said his--and fellow sailors'--only regret at the time was they didn't drop the atomic bombs sooner.
We may not understand that feeling today. Until the Japanese actually unconditionally surrendered, there was still an unsettled feeling that, in perfect hindsight, we can't understand. Today, we know who won the war. Easy to know; history. Those folks lived it moment by moment with a lot of smaller wins, and yes, losses during the war. Certainty was not known.
Amen!
If Filipinos were running the war, they would have been demanding that Japan keep fighting. I believe the Chinese may have felt the same way. But they were too busy fighting each other (Nationalists v Communists) just as hard as they were fighting the Japanese. @@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm
My father in law was a boy in 1945 on the central coast of Honshu. He trained using bamboo spears to fight the invasion. Later, after the surrender a GI gave him chocolate. It was his first time to taste it and he recalled thinking "these men have extra chocolate to give away. How could we possibly win a war against such power ?"
Thanks for sharing this touching story with us! -TimeGhost Ambassador
The USA had it all: food, steel, oil, rubber and manpower. If we had lost, it would have been like a "fixed" boxing match.
The USN had refrigerated Ice cream ships for the Marines. Any Japanese soldier aware of this was probably immediately dejected. IIRC there was an account of Japanese soldiers coming out from their hiding because they smelled cooking food. They had been eating maggot rice for months and couldn't take it anymore.
I remember a war movie where a German general realized that they were going to lose the war because he came across a cake that was mailed to a
GI all the way from the USA!
Worth noting the B-29s were also used in a hugely successful aerial mining campaign, effectively completing the blockade imposed upon Japan by the USN submarine campaign.
I have read that had the war continued into 1946 that the starvation caused by the blockade would have killed more people than the bombs did.
They probably not needed the aerial mining campaign, too. The US Navy's submarine force, which had overcome the technical issues with the Mk. XIV torpedo, was sinking so many ships by the beginning of 1945 that Japanese merchant shipping pretty much ground to a halt anyway. Indeed, by the summer of 1945 Navy submarines were pretty much reduced to sinking ferries plying the Seto Inland Sea.
Thanks for pointing this out. By the end, basically no ships could even move between Japanese home ports, forcing equipment and troops to move over some very challenging geography.
The aerial mining operation took about 5% of bombing campaignn sorties suffered lower loss and effectively blockaded all ports and inshore traffic. using the straights
If he Germans had done iikewise to British ports 1940 onwards and put all the R&D re0sources they put into U-boat fleet exapansion development into aerial mine and torpedoes it is likely that they would have dcveloped the pressure wave triggered fuzse and not even the brits had counter measures for that.
All this ids ddisputed but thge Brits had the defence data no. type and tonnage of losses. we should by now have records from the German side on how many mines were dropped.
submarines wer often used in developing defensive fields.
So one could argue that Both Doenitz and LeMay got it wrong.
Ecepytv thast neruther aaatb the time had the data to base bn analysis on.
For aerial aggressive mining to work well as strategy you need an island based enemy.
Airbases or sea posts (tiny island or atoll will do nicely) within 600 miles, a succession of fuses, a stockpile of advnced torpedoes (production bottleneck) long range bombers. Night navigation, nihhhhhght flying skills and time for the embargo to finish its job.
1940-45 there was no way to stop such a strategy.
In order to avoid US terror-bombing the Japanese resorted to sending their children to Korea on those ships you're oh so proud of sinking
Wherever their military went after Pearl Harbor...their behavior toward prisoners of war and non-combatants was so egregious, it had galvanized America into holding the entire population accountable...and it put the home islands right in the crosshairs...But it's important to remain in possession of the fact THEY started this..
I mean it was using japans own playbook against them. All their raids over Asia they never once hesitated to bomb civilian centers. If the roles were reversed the Japanese wouldn't have even felt bad tbh.
If the government was so worried about their civilian population, they could have surrendered and ended it. But they didn't care about their own people. Same in Germany. The government brought this destruction on their own people - they sowed the wind, as they say, so they reaped the whirlwind.
My father always felt that he survived the war because of the usage of the atomic bombs. He was trained as a glider pilot for the invasion of Japan in November of 1945, and his life expectancy in combat was not encouraging and he knew it. In later years after the war when folks would decry the use of the bombs, he would speak up in defense of the decision to use the bombs for that reason. The Japanese people were indoctrinated in a fight to the death mentality that would have made a ground invasion a bloodbath. The use of the bombs established a reason for the Japanese to surrender in a way that did not dishonor them and save face.
Don't forget the Asian Holocaust. Over 100,000 civilians were killed a month throughout the occupied areas. The Japanese soldiers were animals.
that and the Japanese high ups did not want Stalins crazy ass getting involved. which the Red Army was planning on doing. everybody knew it was best to make peace with the Americans.
Met Paul Tibbets grandson recently and expressed my gratitude for his Grandfathers efforts during the war. A great many americans are alive today thx to his grandfathers efforts.
I, too, am grateful.
My son, then age 8, and I met Paul Tibbets in 2000. I greeted Gen. Tibbets and introduced him to my son with the words, "Sir, my father had been assigned to the invasion of Japan. I'd like for you to meet my 8 year old son, who is possibly here to shake your hand because of your mission to help end the war."
I could tell by his reaction that Paul Tibbets was genuinely moved by meeting yet another American who was likely alive because of the war-winning decisions and missions made then.
My grandfather, from Jeollanam-do, Korea, was a survivor of the Tokyo Air Raid. Because he was Korean, he was denied entry to the shelter. In the end, he ended up in a septic tank full of sewage. The bomb hit the shelter directly and killed everyone, but my grandfather survived. Rip park-yong man(1923~2021)
Amazing. Thank you from the Southern USA
YGBWT
The problem with these types of opinions on historical events is that they are short on alternative solutions to the ones the historian is criticizing. Japan had just spent the last 15 years turning Asia into a graveyard even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, including Manchuria (remember Nanking?), Korea, The Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, etc. Some estimates go as high as 10 million people killed mostly civilians with no sign of stopping. What else could the United States have done to get Japan to stop?
It is easy to criticize. It is much harder to come up with viable alternative solutions as millions are being slaughtered.
I don't know what problem people have with 'it's the responsibility of a warring nation to surrender if it wants the fighting to stop' as a rule, it makes perfect sense. "America knew victory was inevitable" well even if that's true it's up to Japan to provision a surrender at *IT'S* earliest convivence, y'know whenever you're ready to stop dying *WE'RE* ready to stop killing.
You don't have to like war but aside from war being what it is what exactly is wrong with the basic rules? And even if you do take issue with the rules of war that's a reason to advocate for a change to the rules going forward not a cause to criticize those who adhered to them as they were in the past.
My father was a Staff Sargent stationed at McChord AAF in 1945 a medic assigned to the invasion of the Japanese home islands - he told me the Japanese were fanatics, would fight to the last person and never surrender - when shipped out they never expected to return alive - the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war and as a result I exist - at that time the Japanese were fanatics and did not abide by the Geneva conventions and protocols for war and were sadistic in the extreme to anyone captured alive - people today cannot imagine what living in that kind of reality would be like - the decisions made then cannot be criticized through the lens of today.
I expect that is the propaganda he was told. Might have been true to an extent
My late father served on a landing ship. In a video interview at the Library of Congress he said he believed he survived the war because of the nukes. Had it not been for the nukes, I also might never have existed.
Japan could have stopped those raids anytime they wanted to. Just raise the WHITE FLAG.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson has written about his father, who was one of Gen. LeMay's fliers on the B-29 raids over Japan. He said that it took his father a long time to recover from all of the amphetamines the fliers were compelled to consume.
I believe your statement but I don't believe what Hanson said. My father flew under Lemay on Tinian I never heard that story & I heard a lot.
5:18 The Air raids Do-little Damage... I see what you did there Timeghost
Nice catch! -TimeGhost Ambassador
I knew Curtis LeMay when I was a youngster. I didn’t really realize his significance, but he was a rather quiet individual, and did not like to be disturbed when he was eating. He brought the war to an end and saved countless American lives.
Interesting. Wonder if the sight of cooked red meat and the bombings ever crossed his mind. I know my mother didn't like barbecue or blacked meat. She was in several bombing raids in Germany as a kid.
She saw and smelled this shit for 2 years.
She lived in Worms Germany.
Japan and Germany.
Paid for their treachery with the blood of their own .
Now putins doing it.
History repeats only because we let it.
Mr. Olsson,
Your speech at the end I always find stirring. The deeper look into war and it's personal effects on us as individuals and us as a people takes these historical facts to a higher place and gives us pause to reflect. Thank you and all those working with you.
Amen.
if only we lived in a perfect world.
A powerful reflection on the current moment
Imperial Japanese : Launchs Operation PlayStupidGames
_Four Years Later_
Imperial Japanese : Signs The Treaty of WinStupidPrizes
I appreciate how Sparticus asks us to empathize with the late war state of mind. Those men, for the most part, weren’t monsters, they were human.
and a hell of a lot braver than the namby pamby similarly aged that wander around nowadays.
@@chuckh5999 boomer comment
They were both. As a quote I like goes: "There's a beast in every man and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand." Yes it is a show and book, but GRRM was a conscientious objector to Vietnam and he makes a point to show how war effects the average person. Not just the crimes committed to them, but how easily you can get otherwise decent people to do terrible, terrible things.
@@chuckh5999it's okay Grandpa, take your pills and lie back down, Wheel of Fortune is gonna be on soon
@terryshaw.
It is the human form that makes monsters.
That is the difference from beasts.
The recent Japanese movie "Godzilla Minus One" is set at the end of the war and in the following years. It shows in graphic detail the devastation of Tokyo that took years to rebuild. For those that think it is just another monster movie, it has a great human story showing characters living with survivors guilt (both from the war and the monster attack). I do not remember seeing such an on screen representation before of post war Tokyo. Also of note, the lead character was a kamikaze pilot, the fact that he is alive should tell you something. I encourage anyone interested to watch this excellent movie (not just monster movie).
That is an interesting fact, I'll have a look! Also thanks for your comment! -TimeGhost Ambassador
I ws also going to note the new Godzilla film in that regard - you beat me to the punch! It's a really good movie, which is not something I would normally say about a Godzilla movie.
Thank you very much !
This sounds like an amazing plot...
Godzilla minus one is an incredible movie!
The pilot returning to Japan and learning that his relatives (including his parents) have all perished in the firebombing.
And then being blamed by the neighbor for failing to do his duty (to protect Japan).
Him being haunted by survivor's guilt and a fair share of PTSD - that was an incredible job both by the actor and the director!
The scene where he breaks down, wondering if he died in the war with everything around him just being an illusion.....
My personal opinion is that the Hollywood adaptions of Godzilla are absolutely not my taste, while the Japanese movies are great - Shin Godzilla (2016) was a wonderful way to describe the early reactions to the Fukushima disaster and the current movie is a way to describe Japan's postwar society.
As I see it, the monster itself is not the center of the movie - it is just used as a supplemental tool to narrate the story of the returning war veteran and his personal demons.
Don't start a fight you can't finish.
When Lemay was in Europe his bomber pilots were aborting missions out of fear with as much as 20% of his force dropping out with "engine trouble". He responded by going on missions in the lead plane of the leading squadron and threatening to cout martial any pilot who aborted. Aborted missions fell off dramatically. 18:00 I would point out that 40,000 people in the lands occupied by Japan were dying every month by various causes. The Atomic bombs saved more than American lives. So your view of the costs of the war is a little myopic, presentist and self-referential, Spartacus.
Was it necessary? No one can say. Would the mere threat of a Soviet invasion combined with a crippled industry due to the embargo force the japanese government to see sense, no one can say. Too often Americans assume that the japanese people had a say in the war. The reality is that Japan was a dictatorship, and the higher ups could not care about the people. The firebombing of Tokyo did not convince the war council to surrender.
US morale bombing has not ended a war. Be it in Japan, Germany, Korea, Vietnam Syria or against the Yemenis now. In autocratic regimes, the ego of the top brass is more important than the lives of thousands.
@@take2762No one thought civilians had a say, we were appealing to the military to see reason and not selfishly throw away lives for their own pride and ego. But it was futile as it was ingrained in both the civilian population and the military to fight to the bitter end. I'd say they absolutely were necessary and were quite useful in showing the emperor the futility of the situation and to finally take control. You mention the Soviets and the embargos, yet don't mention that even after all of this and going against the entire world they still wouldn't give up.
My Uncle Ed was a Air Force tunnel rat on the island of Iwo Jima. My parents and my Aunt said he was a changed man when he came home. Even so he seemed to get through it by talking with my cousin and I about it. He didn't sugar coat any of it.
Never Forget. -TimeGhost Ambassador
What did he talk about?
Do you want to share any of it?
@@thomaskositzki9424 He talked of the smell, using flame throwers and grenades to clear them. He said that they had hidden areas were they would hide and if you missed them, would come out and surprise you. He said he could smell the smell of death for several years after coming home. Uncle Ed was a Iowa farm boy and enlisted at 17. He was a good man and really to be honest spent more time with me then my own father.
That must have been interesting, since there was no "Air Force" in 1945
@@dukeford Excuse me, Army Air Corp. I got it confused with my cousin who was Air Force 1967-71 Vietnam.
British Columbia was also the target of Japanese balloon attacks and the RCAF maintained a few squadrons of weight reduced Hurricanes to try to shoot down balloons as well as a few mosquitos. Most of the pilots were air cadets so it also served as training. The summer of 1945 saw slightly higher than normal forest fires in BC but not statistically unreasonable. There is some concern that some UXB's exist in the mountains of BC to this day.
Balloon bombs were also found in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and Northwest Territories.
@@sbmcmull Found well inland in the US as well, in part because they'd be much more easily seen in the prairies. The bomb which killed 6 in Oregon in 1945 was discovered by picnickers in 1945 hanging from a tree in a national forest. If you find a strange package hanging from a tree in a forest in BC or the western US it is likelier to be a bomb than DB Cooper's lost loot.
I think one of the best summations of Curtis LeMay and this campaign is found in the Errol Morris documentary “Fog of War” about Robert S. Macnamara (defence secretary to JFK and LBJ), who served in LeMay’s staff during WW2. LeMay was a brutal and direct sonofabitch who knew what he was doing, who once said to Macnamara they all would be executed as war criminals if they lost the war. The anecdote about his reaction to Macnamara’s analysis of B25 bomber crews turning back from missions is fascinating - LeMay said he’d fly in the lead group of every raid and anyone who turned back would be court-martialled. The sequence of the documentary where they run through the Japanese cities burned (with an American city for comparison) is sobering, when you think it was destruction wrought in less than a year.
Was the first thing that I thought of when Mr Olsson started to speak of the civilians killed in the bombings. The numbers killed in the fire bombing was staggering, and relatively unknown to most. The "Fog of War" made those numbers especially significant when comparing them with U.S. cities. ruclips.net/video/RceLAhPOS9Q/видео.html
Good thing we don't do that kind of thing any more, raining down fire and brimstone on our fellow man.
@@whazzat8015 oh yes humans are so civilised now!
In the case of Lemay, the question is whether he was a monster or a hero. In WW2 sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference. We won the war and LeMay became the good guy with a four star position in the new US Air Force, a cushy retirement and a seat on the board of the National Geographic Society, among other appointments, If we had lost the war, there's no question that he would have been executed as a war criminal.
LeMay believed the worst war is a long war. Best for both sides to bring it to a brutal conclusion.
Curtis Lemay was the US version of Englands “Bomber Harris”. They both believed in total war and the annihilation of the enemy.
But the US version worked
My Japanese mother survived the 3/10/45 bombing of Tokyo. As a toddler I went to Curtis Lemay elementary school at Offutt AFB (HQSAC).
The irony…
You did justice covering such serious, and sad, topic.
Compliments to the writers!
The narration is impeccable & gripping. Very very well done. Thank you for educating us! 🫡
Thanks a lot for those kind words! Never Forget. -TimeGhost Ambassador
Spartacus does too much armchair moralizing.
@@rogerjohnson2562 This series is called War Against Humanity so a discussion of how the war damaged the humanity of everyone it touched is quite appropriate.
LaMay knew that the Japanese had no intention of surrender. They would fight to the last man. He and the rest of the U.S. command wanted to save American soldiers from a ground offensive in Japan. So he did what he had to do, break their will to fight!
The channel, "WWII US BOMBERS" has a number of videos on the firebombing campaign over Japan. The techniques, technology, etc. I was very surprised to find out that these attacks killed more people than the two atomic bomb drops. It was very bad.
Instead of the high altitude daylight precision bombing the USAAF used earlier, especially over Germany, Le May changed everything. He switched to night, low altitude, high speed bombing with incendiaries to very deadly effect.
Earlier Nimitz was trying to get the USAAF to conduct massive aerial mining of Japanese waterways. US Navy submarines had been working effectively in strangling Japanese shipping but could not patrol the waters between Japan and Korea. They tried earlier in 1943 but it was too dangerous and costly. Nimitz asked the USAAF to mine the waters of Japan that the submarines could not patrol. The army had denied it repeatedly until Le May took over the job. Le May wasn't keen on it but he agreed to work with the navy. "Operation Starvation" was carried out. It is strategically one of the greatest, most effective uses of bombers with profound effect on Japan. That mining operation with the navy's submarines finally put two hands over the throat of Japan. Time was ticking. Post-war interviews with Japanese government and military officials said if the US had started that aerial mining campaign earlier, the war would have been over a lot sooner. When the shipping was cut off the Emperor was told that soon Japanese industry would grind to a halt. Not to mention incoming shipments of food. Remember a big reason for Japan venturing overseas, i.e. taking Korea, was farmland. Japan already had problems feeding its own population before Pearl Harbor.
Sometime in the future - 25, 50, 75 years hence - what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too.
-Curtis LeMay
It is 2023, not 1945. I am not consumed with the emotions of the moment. As usual, on this issue, Sparty, I do respect your opinion, I just flat disagree with you. If I had been LaMay, I'd have made the same decisions. I have three uncles and two cousins I've never met, dead in the South Pacific, and my father was scheduled to be shipped from Europe where he was occupying Germany, to the Japanese Theater for the invasion. I may not have been born if he had died there and he had already had a long war.
I believe American officers had the duty and responsibility to end that war with the minimum further loss of American life as fast as passable. Period. As for the innocent civilians, they supported the war, celebrated and took pride in the victories, sent their sons to fight, murder and rape their neighbors and they paid for their choice in the end.
I, frankly, i resent a little bit your taking a holier-then-thou attitude about the commanders of a righteous Army for acting to defeat an evil enemy in the shortest amount time while striving to minimize the losses of their own troops. My uncles and cousins (who I never met) died defending my country and our freedom from these monsters. I'm saying that seventy years after the fact, not in the heat of the moment.
If I could go back with a magic time machine, I'd drop three A-bombs on Japan on Dec 8th, ending the war the day after it started, I would. And I really would not care what some guy sitting in a comfortable office seventy years later might have to say about it.
Just sayin'.
It is easy to look back on history from an easy chair or as an academic analyzing numbers. There is a truth that few if any wish to address and that is the Japanese people were ready to fight to the death to defend their home islands. Men, women, children, and the elderly were all expected to play their role in making it so costly for the Allies that they would abandon their conquest of the Islands. Conservative casualty estimates for the allies, mostly American for invasion and taking of the main islands was around 1-2 million. In reality, it would have meant the extermination of the Japanese as a people and the eradication of Japanese culture except for what was left in museums. In addition to the dead, maimed, and wounded there would have been the soldiers forced to shoot down children fitted with bombs or worse those only looking for food. Can anyone imagine the psychological trauma inflicted on Allied soldiers? Captured Japanese films and post-war interviews with Japanese offers confirmed this as well as the plan to execute all Allied POWs in Japanese camps. Yes, this was a brutal war and the air campaign directed by Curtis LeMay was indeed inhuman. What would the author of this video have done given the alternatives presented to the Allies? The same goes for people who condemn the use of the atomic bomb equally as inhuman. It is easy to come to moral conclusions when one is detached from the historical and psychological realities of the time.
you didn't mention it here, but weren't the transatlantic fire balloons made with the consideration that they could later be equipped with the biological warfare agents of unit 731? I've heard of such a connection before, and it would make sense to me that they first would launch trial balloons with incendiary loads because that was the load most likely to enable the japanese to identify where the balloons were landing. reports of disease outbreaks would likely be more effectively suppressed, and I imagine there would have been some concern about balloons releasing their payload on the japanese territory from which they were launched that made it more prudent to use incendiary trial balloons first to test how likely they were to hit places where a plague bomb would be impactful, in order to be able to weigh the risk against the reward.
My understanding is unit 731 was not actually an effective bioweapons program, in the same way Mengele was not an effective medical researcher. It was a sick torture playground with only the slightest dressing of a research program, and people as high up as the emperor knew that reality.
It's a reality of war and wartime governments that beaurocracy and state dogma creates pathways and justifications for just about anything humans want to do, free of morality and ethics, and reason or thought.
The Chinese did one recently and the dum*ss Biden sat there like a lump of shiite!
LeMay like Sheridan knew what he was doing . The stupidity of army vs navy instead of working together. I personally blame the Emperor for not having the courage or ability to control the military and make them work together.
Bataan???
My father fought the Japanese as a guerilla in the occupied Philippines. To the day he died, he hated the Japanese. The legacy of war is one of pure hatred for both vanquished and victors. Millions of Chinese & Filipino children died at the hands of the IJN & IJA. They were killed with bayonets, bullets, fires, and artillery. Some were killed as reprisals for American or Filipino military actions. Many were killed for no reason other than the brutal blood lust of the occupying Japanese forces. Was the incendiary bombing of Tokyo a was crime? Of course it was. No more so than the slaughter of tens of millions of civilians in the Japanese occupied territories. Personally, I find it a war crime that WW2 history is not taught in Japan like it is in Germany. But that's just my opinion.
LeMay found that high level bombing did not work due to the jet stream at 20-30k feet. And the Japanese didn't have any 57mm AAA thus at 5000 ft there was a gap in their defenses... also found that most of their machine shops were in shacks in the houses all over the cities (mom & pop machine shops) where parts for their guns, tanks, planes, etc.. were made. Thus firebombing was the only way to really destroy all their production. And thus he did destroy it. As for civilians.. they were the ONES RUNNING THE SHOPS. Unfortunately they kept their families with them... and thus children & the old perished with them.
War is hell but keeping kids near the production centers is asking for even more hell.
Great episode. Only bit I disagree with is that the Americans knew that the war was nearly won. Almost everyone at the time, including the very few who were aware of the Manhattan project, believed that an invasion of mainland Japan was mostly inevitable and hundreds of thousands of American casualties would come from it. These bombings could also have been seen as necessary to weaken the Japanese ability to defend their home island for that invasion. These weren't seen as bombings to save a handful of American lives and shorten the war a few days, they were seen as saving vast American lives and shortening the war by years. We now know the invasion would not happen, but that was not the case at the time.
The USSR wasn't yet at war with Japan, and Germany wasn't yet defeated. Once Germany was defeated, if Japan hadn't surrendered by that time due to the blockade, the United Nations knew they could turn up the pressure by diverting all Allied forces against the Japanese. This is true even disregarding the atomic bomb.
Regarding the atomic bomb, it is unclear that they contributed to Japan's surrender. Both bombs were dropped within days, and yet Japan didn't surrender till the USSR declared war. Moreover, the atomic bombs did less damage than firebombing had done.
The RUclips channel Shaun has a good video on the atomic bombing.
@@alphamikeomega5728 You've got your timeline wrong. The Soviet invasion began on the same that the 2nd bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. And the Emperor specifically mentioned the atomic bombs, but not the fire bombings or the Soviet attack, in his broadcast to the nation ordering and explaining the surrender.
@@brucetucker4847 You're right that the USSR declared war before the bombing of Nagasaki, but there were only a few hours between the two. One piece of evidence that the USSR's invasion might have been key was that Japan had been trying to use the USSR as an intermediary in peace talks for a conditional surrender, thinking their non-aggresion pact made them somewhat friendly with Japan.
That the atomic bomb was cited as a reason for surrender is perhaps the strongest evidence we have that the bombs worked. However, this is still a statement from a monarch directed at their public, and so it deserves the same pinch of salt as does any public statement by a politician.
At the same time, we lack the counterfactual evidence for what would have happened had Japan's government had time to react to the USSR's invasion before the bombs were dropped, or for what would have happened had the bombs been dropped near, but not on, cities.
@@alphamikeomega5728 What United Nations?
@@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm The Allies refer to themselves as the United Nations in 1944. The organisation of today is descended from this alliance.
I went to this small town museum in Hudson's Hope British Columbia Canada and they actually have one of those balloon's ignitor modules in their displays. It was found in the area by a hunter in the 1950's. Its seriously the coolest rarest thing i've ever seen and for it to be in this tiny little town is wild.
Indeed that is a very interesting fact! Thanks for sharing it! -TimeGhost Ambassador
One of those balloons Japan launched towards the U. S. actually landed as far east as Thermopolis, Wyoming. Growing up in Wyoming, I learned about that part of the war back in elementary school in the early 1980s. Gawd, I'm old. LOL
A few reached Canada as well. The Japanese thought they were all failures because the wartime censorship forbade mention of any public mention of them or where they were landing
When this came up before, I looked it up...one made it to Farmington, Michigan, about 40 miles from where I'm sitting typing this.
We know that in Nazi Germany there was at least a subset of civilians who opposed Hitler knowing he was leading them to destruction. And of course there were brave souls in the military who risked theirs lives to take him out, to no avail. Japan was on the same destructive path. Did they have any internal resistance? I’d love to know the answer if anyone has insight into that area.
I'm jumping the timeline here but there is a great book called "Downfall" that goes over a lot of the Tokyo bombing, the A-Bomb, the coup etc. In the book it touches on the fact that the US still couldn't believe that the Japanese didn't even consider surrendering to them even after the fire bombings. It also goes over the fact that the Japanese tried to get the Soviets involved to broker some type of peace. It is wild (to me) that they just refused to surrender.
With their militarism and highly stylised code of honour they had convinced themselves that surrender was worse than death. Surrender meant disgrace to them, while death granted honour. With that mindset, surrender was almost impossible to them.
@@Kevin-mx1vi Yep
Instead of brokering a peace deal the Soviets declared war and quickly overran huge swaths of China and Manchuria. Japan feared Soviet occupation more than American and influenced their decision to surrender.
The problem was the Japanese system of government was not set up to behave rationally. The decision to launch the war was irrational; the same dysfunction prevented a rational decision to end the war.
@@Kevin-mx1vi Or, they sat watching the collective west rape India, South-East Asia and China and thought "we're next"
80 years later I’m certainly pleased they are on our side.
While acknowledging the horrors of the bombing campaign, I have to wonder if there was an acceptable alternative. We had seen that Germany didn't accept incomplete defeat after World War I, and something similar was likely with a Japan that did not unconditionally surrender. And given the war crimes and crimes against humanity that imperial forces were known to have committed, leaving an unreconstructed Japan able to make war was an intolerable outcome.
The part of the story that’s being forgotten here is the brutal shock of the way Japanese civilians behaved at Saipan. The suggestion that victory was in sight for the Americans does not take this into account. Indeed, planners began to realize that an invasion of Japan would be harrowing in the extreme if not outright impossible. This was the stage onto which Lemay stepped.
While i despise the man and am sickened by what he did to the civilians of japan, i am at the same time forced to admit that 80 years of hindsight does not present to me an idea of what to do instead.
@@Phoenix-ej2sh Both are true. It was clear to everyone that Japan was going to lose the war. Also the increasing Japanese resistance was a morale issue for US troops. A lot of the vets who had been fighting since 42 had to go home. They had done their bit and didn't really fancy dying after everything they had already seen.
@@Healermain15Should they have known that? WWI was only a generation earlier, and it seemingly showed that every nation had a breaking point. Russia, Austria, and Germany all shattered, Italy and France came very close, and even Britain lost Ireland. Further, the Allies own experience with being bombed in WWII wasn’t really indicative of what Germany and Japan faced - the Allied campaigns did an order of magnitude or more damage than the Axis campaigns.
@@matthewcreelman1347 Wrong. WWI Germans civilians were not throwing themselves off cliffs to avoid capture or diving planes into our ships. To see the Japanese nation as anything other than psychotically homicidal to the bitter end was impossible for decision-makers at the time.
@@Healermain15 The people should have risen up. The fact that they didn't means that they were complicit all along.
As always, expertly done, and very interesting. Thank you.
Thanks a lot for the compliments! We literally pour our hearts into the creation of those videos! Never Forget! -TimeGhost Ambassador
My dad met Curtis LeMay when he was in SAC.
The US Air Force is rehabbing the airfield on Tinian Island after almost 75 years
Likely in recognition of North Korean intensions rather than Chinese belligerence. Like who knew parking a whole fleet in one forward spot (Pearl Harbor) might have been a bad idea. Having only one key airfield on an island to be targeted for having important naval as well as USAF assets is also not great war-planning. Alternates are helpful before things get hot..
LeMay was notorious for sitting in the base theater smoking his cigar.
"For the Americans it must be clear that victory is a question of time"
The issue was literally the question of the time needed...
Without the benefit of hindsight, no one could know how well the blockade was working and how long Japan could have kept fighting.
After the war was over and after having the chance to asses the situation in Japan firsthand, the Allies estimated they would have probably been forced to surrender in november-dicember 1945 but
-it was almost 1 year from now (and 4-5 months after August) and this estimate was the result of the combined effect of the naval and aerial campaign
- each extra month of war meant hundreds of k of civilians and PoWs dying all over Asia due to abuses, massacres and starvation (Japan itself was close to a famine in August 1945)
- Japan strategy was actually to make the war last as long as possible and waiting for the American home front to get tired of the war economy, the rationing, the deaths, etc (which they were starting to be after the fall of Germany)
- we can't know if the Military would have forced the soldiers and civilians to fight and die to the bitter end regardless of the bombs, the blockade and the famine (which meant even more months of fighting and even more millions of deaths in Asia and Japan)
Being defeated doesn't mean being willing to surrender.
Both Germany and Japan were defeated but both kept fighting until Berlin fell and until the emperor made his speech.
Look what it took to force Japan to surrender. Everything that happened was needed, including the strategic bombing
It was a lot more ambiguous than “we have no idea what’s going on on the Japanese side!” It was a whole lot more complicated than “let’s just throw the whole lot and the kitchen sink at them to be safe!”
Stick around on our channel for the next few months, and you’ll see.
The first question of victory in war is determined by the constitution of your enemy look no further than France vs Russia in WW2 and cross reference with WW1. Japans war strategy from the outset was always a gamble that it's constitution (or stomach for bloodshed) could exceed America's.
Japan doesn't deserve sympathy, it's people who were unwitting pawns to the state maybe and the state I can empathize with it's desire to be held as a peer amongst the Imperial nations but it's suffering in the war was it's just due and in the end it was treated well by a foe far more gracious in victory than it had been.
For some reason Japan receives an incalculable measure of sympathy not afforded to Germany for it's role and fate in WW2 despite the fact that it ended up in far better place after the war than it was in before.
@@MarikHavair only people can receive sympathy. Nations are not people, people make nations. Those people are not the Borg, they are individuals. I’m sure that you can appreciate the absurdity of holding a Kamikaze pilot to the same standard of responsibility as a two month old infant. I’m certain that you understand that a six year old school kid has no agency for what their emperor does. Please tell me that you get such basic logic and human decency. I really hope you do, for the sake of anyone that might depend on you in even the smallest way…
@@spartacus-olsson Perhaps the Emperor should remember that the next time he invites war into his house?
@@MarikHavair I’m failing to see the relevance of that to your sympathy comments…
Japan dismissed Geneva doctrine and implemented a policy of extreme brutality against combatants, civilians alike wherever they went. Americans had a moral duty to end the war as quickly as possible by any means necessary.
They didn't as much dismiss as they weren't signatories before WWII, much like the USSR and the Nazis also disregarded it with Eastern European POWs.
If I remember from Martin Caidin's book _A Torch to the Enemy_ , American diplomats who lived in Japan pre-1940 noted that Japanese cities were very crowded with mostly wooden structures and small workshops within those wooden structures. That's why during the first major incendiary raid, Operation _Meetinghouse_ , some 16 square miles of central Tokyo crowded with those structures burnt to the ground, with the Asakusa and Nihonbashi areas effectively razed to the ground with a death toll many say was far above the official reported figure of just over 82,000 dead.
The biggest tragedy was _this need not have happened_ . The 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake's death toll over circa 120,000 had most of them die from the massive fires caused by the spilt cooking stoves all over the city, since the quake occurred just before lunchtime. Tokyo authorities should have banned wooden structures in the center of the city and realigned the streets to serve as better fire breaks in light of this earthquake; if they implemented that plan, Tokyo would not have suffered such a horrible loss from the 9-10 March 1945 bombing raid.
You know we have enough problems today to deal with. Without going back 80 to 200 years back and deal with something we can no longer fix.
Or… we can look into the mirror that is our common past and see where similar things that are problems today as well were handled, where it led to, and choose a different, better path. Just a thought.
Sir, it's easy to be an armchair quarter back. The object was to defeat the enemy at all costs.
Apparently you are not a student of the complete history of WWII. Given the Allied casualty rate during the battles of Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa the obvious fact was that invading Japan was going to be an Allied blood bath. Crippling the enemy's willingness to fight was the only strategy open to the allies. Fire bombing and eventually the Atomic Bomb were the only strategies available to the Allies to subdue the Japanese enemy. So who should have died: the enemy or your comrades in arms? Your answer - the Allies? You can't be serious.
I had to replay the outro part a few times. The narrative talent is impeccable, it truly brings to light the tragedy and mindset of the war. Thank you
JUST recite the FACTS !!! I'm not so infantile that I need to nurse upon some half-baked actor to set my mood !!!
You don't get to come along 80 years later and call ANYTHING the U.S. did a crime against humanity. Of all the major antagonists in WWII, the U.S. is probably the LEAST guilty of crimes against humanity. Yes, I'm including everything. Are you going to talk about the Japanese, starting in 1937? Would you even dare to tell the whole story of the internment program or the legitimate reasons for the internment of the Japanese? (Uh, whole story?)
You cannot be this damn stupid can you?
Given the vile, inhumane treatment of prisoners of the IJ forces I find it very hard to have any sympathy.
@@coffeemakir1977 You could start by asking the millions of Chinese civilians who were killed by the Japanese military . . . . . . if it were possible.
@@Fargoguy54 does someone's point go over your head often or is this a first
Citizens of Nankin like this film.
Something not widely known about the "kamikaze" pilots is, the majority of them were NOT fanatical soldiers who volunteered
The military at the time hated the intellectuals & university students; when they required pilots for this program, they shut down large parts of the universities and force drafted students directly into the suicide programs
I don't remember actual numbers and don't want to just make something up, but I believe it was a large majority that were either conscripted in this way, or ordered to join out of the regular pilot ranks to serve as squad leaders to the recruits
This had important consequences for Japan after the war, as all the young intellectuals who Japan needed to guide them forward were dead. Only the former military was around to lead things for the first while.
Those 6 civilians killed happened in my state of Oregon. I believe it was kids on a field trip who found it and were killed. Kinda ironic kids made the ballons then ended up killing kids.
The Force is strong with this channel.
A Japanese pronunciation note: The J is pronounced like the English J. But otherwise I'm pleased with the pronunciation of Japanese names from Spartacus.
Yeah that was kind of grating 😅
Despite the fire-bombings AND the first A-bomb, it took another A-bomb before the Japanese surrendered. Some even say it's the Soviet's invasion of Manchuria that hastened the surrender. What does that say about the Emperor's and the IJA"s mindset in 1945?
The Tokyo firestorm gets a mention in Oppenheimer.
... And LeMay is just getting started.
Whoa. Amazing speech at the end. I will be showing my high school students that when I get to WWII in March
Thanks a lot, it is a pleasure! -TimeGhost Ambassador
I love it when Sparty gets almost biblical in his ending speeches . Gives me chills .
wow...a somewhat overheated presentation of interesting story devolves into a fiery pulpit speech...wooo
This is the most powerful video and words of the 6 year series. 👏👏👏
This guy really gets off on this..
Happy New year Spartacus
Great episode, the war nears its end yet the deathtoll intensifies. Thanks again.
Great pontificating, just remember for every Japanese civilian killed the Japanese killed 18 non-Japanese during their conquests. As Churchill told the US Congress, “they will be taught a lesson they and the world will never forget “. Everyone knows war isn’t the answer, but it’s found useful while looking for the answer. As some sage once said, “only the dead have seen an end of war”.
I hope you guys will find time to cover most of what you find essential. At this point, it almost feels like War Against Humanity needs its own sub-series'.
I saw your last episode being re-posted as "censored", that is madness. History should be spread to all, for such massacre should never happen again.
Thank you Spartacus, researchers and writers for this coverage!
Thanks a lot for those kind words. We see eye to eye regarding the reuploads, unfortunately, this view is not universal. Never Forget. -TimeGhost Ambassador
LeMay is a fascinating person, probably most comparable to William Sherman. He understood risk and how to manage it better than anyone in US history. He was a genius, and he understood war in its basest form. But his ways are not historically defensible, although that may change with the moral tides that the present uses to judge others.
I agree. But the calculus was made on both sides, and Japanese high command understood the only way to keep their manufacturing base was to disperse it among the population. Their hope was the US command couldn't tolerate the bloodletting to stop them. Their hopes were in vain, LeMay was running the show. Even if, as Germany attempted, they moved things underground then what was left was to kill the workers in their homes. At this point Japan's surrender was inevitable but their high command was going to fight on regardless of the deaths and the US command was going to do whatever it took to get them to surrender. This included invasion even though it was estimated it would double US deaths and casualties for the entire war until this point.
Well done! Curtis LeMay and William T. Sherman -- yes, strategically similar.
LeMay remarked after the war that had the Allies lost, he'd have been put on trial as a war criminal.
@@bloodrave9578 I was aware. Do you think that means he knew it was morally wrong, or that it simply meant the axis powers would take vengeance out on him if given the chance?
@@ltdannichols I would say a combination of both
The japanese obviously didn't realize how many volunteer fire departments there are in America 😂
For the Americans it must be clear that victory is just a question of time? Okay, but how much time? It seems that way, yet the Japanese have shown no signs of capitulating. You can't just voluntarily let up because it looks like the war should be over soon. Sparing the lives of your people is important, actually, and concluding the war would only be shortened "by a day" is a reach. They didn't have the perspective of time past, they didn't know what day would be the end. The Japanese people may have been put in danger by their government's actions, but I don't know what way to cleanly go after the perpetrators and spare the innocent.
Since all the buildings were wooden and close together the fire spread out of control.
Damn. I keep coming back to this video and I keep getting goosebumps at the last monologue by Spartacus. He could read the phone book and I would still gladly listen.
Sparticus is weak, and that weakness is what causes war.
😂 I’m not a nation, and even then - try me! You wouldn’t be the first one to mistake my civilized demeanor for an unwillingness to throw a hard punch. You seem to be confusing the idea of supporting Just War fought with moral means, with defenseless pacifism.
What? This very war started for the Japanese precisely because cooler heads were unfairly sidestepped by the militant government.
@@extrahistory8956I think our OP is not aware of Isaac Asimov’s paraphrase “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.“
@LongFatJohnston you mean that fellow who’s empire crumbled while he lost his mind somewhere in the Persian mountains? The man who died young, abandoned by his generals and friends in a foreign land? The one whom other super successful empire builders like Napoleon, and Hitler later tried to emulate, only to meet the same fate?
Try Octavian instead if you’re looking for examples of competence, might, and fame… his achievement and claim to fame? The longest lasting peace between the major powers of the world in known history, which outlasted his own life by many decades. He died an old man, surrounded by friends and allies, in an empire he had helped guide away from the path of violence and corruption into peacefulness, prosperity, and stability.
You seem to confuse notoriety and fame with competence… the world also remembers my namesake, a man of the sword who by any standard was a failure.
Quotes by Augustus Octavian for statesmen to live by:
“May it be my privilege to have the happiness of establishing the commonwealth on a firm and secure basis and thus enjoy the reward which I desire, but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government; and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for its future government, will stand firm and stable.”
“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.”
"Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit"
They also had Kamikaze piloted torpedos, boats, and were training sucuide divers should ships approach the Japanese shores.😮
One of the few, if not only, colored airborne units in the US army (the 555th PIB) pioneered allot of the modern smokejumper tactics fighting the fires set by the Japanese balloon bombs
My sister-in-law's father was a combat photographer based out of Tinian. He was tasked with photographing Japanese cities before and after the bombs were dropped including Hiroshima. He knew the crew of the Enola Gay and said they were never the same after they dropped the bomb. My great uncle George on my dad's side flew B-29s in Europe. After the war tried to get into civil aviation but systemic antisemitism prevented him from getting a job. So he re-enlisted to train future pilots. After the Korean War broke out, he was put back into active duty. His plane was shot down over the Yalu River and the general sent by the Pentagon told my grandfather that his brother and the entire crew was killed in action. This was in fact a lie. George and all of his crew except for the bombardier parachuted safely out of the plane but were captured by North Korean troops. The officers were separated from the enlisted men, who were returned home to the States following the armistice. Meanwhile George and the other officers were sent first to Beijing and then to Moscow where they were interrogated by the KGB. George died in a gulag in 1960. In 1993, his body was returned from Russia with an explanation of all that had occurred to him during his long captivity. In a word, he was deemed expendable by the country he'd served.
I hope you will mention the naval mining campaign the B-29s also carried out. It is estimated that had the war not ended when it did, up to 7 million Japanese would have starved to death because no merchant shipping could approach the home islands.
@@fortpark-wd9sx And even today, forgiveness from the countries Japan liberated from the colonial powers still have ill will towards the Japanese. They lived it. Most commentators here only theorize about it all.
@@WilliamMurphy-uv9pm "Liberated" hahahahahaha
Just like the russians have "liberated" us eastern europeans from the germans?🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@thegarfield2414 Very much the same. Japanese propaganda defined it best they could to make it sound like it benefitted the inhabitants. Never was true; but that is the nature of propaganda: lies that benefit the teller more than anyone else. It often makes your own people think that they are the good guys and not evil invaders. Lots of reasons to lie to your own people. In a democracy, it gets you votes to stay in power.
Your presentation is effective and emotional, Spartacus. And your English is impeccable.
That monologue at the end... Never fails to speak volumes...
The pressurized B29 was to partially eliminate the risks and losses from lower level bombing like the B17 and B29 suffered. But at high altitude bombing, the bombs drifted way off target due to high altitude winds. So lower level, fire bombing was institude as a way to inflict the most damage per flight. And don't forget - they started it. It was war in 1942-45.
Textbook example of how to fight a war to win. We forgot this lesson along the way. War is Hell. Anything less is defeat.
And de feat stink!
Ask the people of Nanjing, China, and the Phillipines what they think should have been done.
Great video again... as usual. That Sparty is one snappy dresser, though!
I agree wholeheartedly with the assessment in your conclusion. As an avid history buff, I have spent 35 years studying the Great War and the Second World War yet I still struggle with understanding the rationale for such deliberate atrocities - especially those conducted when the end of the war was so clearly in sight. I have family that have fought for and against Japan (I am Canadian but my wife is Japanese) so it has been interesting to see how my perspective on the Pacific War has changed - especially after visiting both Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima the same year. Politically, it is as if Japan and the USA switched roles post-war: modern Japan is now isolationist like the USA in the 1930s and the USA is now militarist like Japan was in the 1930s.
Nakajima is na-ka-g-ma. Not the swedish j sound. Love the content, let's work on the pronunciation!
And Kamikaze is kamikaZAY, not tze
The documentary _"The Last Bomb"_ document's Lemay's strategy and campaign was produced by his own command and later edited for release by the Smithsonian is an interesting insight into the last few months of the Airwar over Japan.
Thanks for the book recommendation!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwo Film Documentary, not literature
Brilliant insight
Thank you! And thanks for your comment, it helps for the algorithm -TimeGhost Ambassador
Former OSS officer gives a very different take on the Japanese balloon-bombing of the continental U.S. had the potential to wreak havoc on the United States civilian population and destroy civilian morale on the home front. That that they didn't was the result of a cover-up conducted by himself! On orders from his superiors in the OSS, Ogburn called every radio station in the U.S. and asked them to not report the landing of any baloon bombs or the damage they caused. Fires caused by the balloon bombs should either be reported to other causes or not reported at all. Ogburn claims that every single radio station that he contacted complied and covered up the balloon landings. If there had been no cover-up, Ogburn claims, thousand of Americans may have been killed and vast areas of the country, especially forested areas, would have been burned down. As it is, the balloon bombs killed 34 Americans and destroyed large forested areas in spite of the cover-up. He says that the balloon bomb campaign remained secret until several decades after the war, before the USG finally permitted the U.S. press to report it. By that time it was history, not news.
Among those tasked with addressing the balloon bomb threat were the men of the segregated 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the first African-American paratroopers. While they hoped to be able to prove themselves in combat, they were instead seconded to the US Forest Service to serve as some of the first smoke jumpers.
Thank you for this episode.