Was this illegality known before the fact by the perpetrators? Yes, by the statements of the British Prime Minister, and as shown by Anglo-American protests to Japan over its bombing in China. This view is confirmed by the speech of the British Prime Minister before the House of Commons in 1938 in which he said that any such bombing was an "undoubted violation of international law." Shortly after, the League of Nations unanimously passed a resolution affirming that such bombing was illegal.ģ. Was this illegal at the time? If one considers the various conventions trying to limit war and agreed to by the international community as establishing a legal code, then the Hague Convention of 1923 (Articles 22, 23) made indiscriminate urban bombing illegal. Not only would he, McNamara, and others on his planning staff, be charged with war crimes had the Japanese won, but in fact they had committed war crimes.Ģ. These people died not because they lived near military targets or were caught in the crossfire of battle, but because of their nationality and the urban area in which they lived. Bombs were dropped intentionally on unarmed civilians in their homes or at work. Was the indiscriminate (meaning the target was the city, usually the city center, and not military installations) American bombing of urban areas democide (mass murder), that is, the intentional targeting of unarmed civilians with deadly weapons? I don't see how this can be denied. The best sources? Kennett, Lee, A History Of Strategic Bombing (1982), and particularly, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (European Theater), and United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific Theater).ġ. If I recall his words correctly, he thought the Japanese deserved it. For Japan, precision bombing was the rule until the above mentioned General LeMay took over the 20th and 21st bomber Commands, and initiated the firebombing of Japanese cities. In Europe, its loss of bombers became such that it adopted the British strategy of nighttime, indiscriminate urban bombing. I will mention, however, that the United States began its strategic bombing campaign by legal (according to international law) daylight "precision bombing" of military targets in or around urban areas. Equally indiscriminate bombing of German cities by the United States and Britain may have killed about 410,000 German civilians.Īside from these death tolls, I don't want to deal with the nature and sorry history of strategic bombing for the United State and Great Britain. In the war overall, bombing of Japanese cities might have killed about 337,000, including my estimate of 165,000 by atomic bombs, the quintessential city and civilian killers. Before getting into this, I should note that just on the fire bombing of March 9-10, 1944, near 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed, more than died in the Hiroshima atomic bombing. McNamara, Larry Calloway points out that McNamara said in an interview with Morris, "hat when LeMay served under him in the Kennedy administration, the old general commented that if Japan had won the war they both would have been charged for acting like war criminals." To many, including especially those who served in the military during the war, this is ridiculous, morally absurd. In his article, HREF="">"The Firebombing Of Japan: An Apology- Errol Morris Presents Robert S. McNamara, then a lieutenant colonel, who in the 1960s would become the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The worst of these democidal bombings was the firebombing of Japanese cities, almost entirely carried out by American bombers, and designed and commanded by General Curtis LeMay. In my Statistics of Democide, Chapter 13 "Death By American Bombing and Other Democide,", I listed American indiscriminate urban bombing of Germany and Japan as democide-murder by government (I include elsewhere in the book such bombing by Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan). Commentary: Was American WWII Bombing Democide?
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