Comments Elsewhere

Patrick,

You seriously mistake me if you think that I endorse the low-altitude firebombing of over 100 Japanese cities by LeMay’s forces at the orders of Roosevelt and Truman. They are included in the figures when I say that somewhere between half a million and one million Japanese civilians were massacred in the course of the terror-bombing. I do not think that the difference between nuclear terrorism and “conventional” terrorism by means of low-altitude firebombing is worth investing with any great moral weight. My complaints are directed against the campaign as a whole, not the use of nuclear weapons at the end of it. As for how to describe the aims of both the firebombing and the atomic bombing, Truman and LeMay made it quite clear, when LeMay said “There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders,” and Truman said, “It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.”

It was also made clear when they steadfastly refused to give any specific warnings to civilians to evacuate the areas that they were planning to incinerate. (You could object that they couldn’t warn the civilians without warning the military. That’s true, but irrelevant, if you claim that the purpose was to degrade the military-industrial infrastructure, which couldn’t easily be moved on short notice, rather than massacre the population.)

If you want to give a brief in favor of terrorism at the level of entire cities in order to coerce unconditional surrender, then you’re free to do so, but you do have an intellectual responsibility to call it what it is.

In any case, all of this to one side, whatever you may think of Truman or Roosevelt, based on his own public statements and the reminiscences of the soldiers who served under him, it ought to be pretty clear that Curtis LeMay — who actually planned and carried out the details of the bombing campaign — was nothing short of a bloodthirsty maniac who reveled in death and destruction. (He continued the theme after WWII, becoming the chief nuclear hawk among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coined the phrase “bomb them back into the Stone Age” in reference to the Vietnam War, and became the Vice Presidential candidate for George Wallace’s 1968 Presidential campaign, on a platform of white supremacy and more militant anticommunism.) Seems like this is much clearer qualification for a Worst Ten list than sleazy politicized televangelism.

Patrick: “Anyway, setting aside this issue, people who wish to critize the United States can’t have it both ways:”

This is a false dichotomy. If you don’t accept that unconditional surrender followed by occupation was a necessary or proper goal for the war effort, then you needn’t sign on to either the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the continuation of the firebombing and an eventual marine invasion.