[Marxism] Re: It's the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden,

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Brian Shannon asked:

Unless there is a Marxmail contributor now sitting in a library and
checking microfilm for us, we have no idea what allied reportage was
for either Hiroshima or Dresden. However, perhaps some writer has
already done this for us. Is there any account that doesn't simply
recycle old pictures and stories, but attempts to analyze what was
presented to the civilians on the allied side?

The following item describing the firebombing of Japanese cities by the
Americans in WWII contains a few references to how the U.S. mass media
described the atrocities. Not an "analysis", however, although I think
it speaks for itself. I found it on the blog of a professor in Japan:
http://www.tsujiru.net/moen/blog/?cat=1

It wasn't just the capitalist press that hailed these atrocities, of
course. In Canada, the CP newspaper carried the post-Hiroshima banner
headline: "A-bomb KOs Japs!"

--RF

On the Winning Side: Curtis LeMay's Brand of Hell

By MICKEY Z

Last month, within the context of impending US/UK war crimes in Iraq, I
wrote about the 58th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of Dresden
(Feb. 13-14). This month marks another grim reminder of just how far the
US is willing to go: 58 years since General Curtis LeMay, head of the
Twenty-first US Bomber Command, brought his brand of hell into the
Pacific theater.

Acting upon General George C. Marshall's 1941 idea of torching the
poorer areas of Japan's cities, on the night of March 9-10, 1945,
LeMay's bombers laid siege on Tokyo. Tightly packed wooden buildings
were assaulted by 1,665 tons of incendiaries. LeMay later recalled that
a few explosives had been mixed in with the incendiaries to demoralize
firefighters (96 fire engines burned to ashes and 88 firemen died).

One Japanese doctor recalled "countless bodies" floating in the Sumida
River. These bodies were "as black as charcoal" and indistinguishable as
men or women. The total dead for one night was an estimated 85,000, with
40,000 injured and one million left homeless. This was only the first
strike in a firebombing campaign that dropped 250 tons of bombs per
square mile, destroying 40 percent of the surface area in 66 death-list
cities (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The attack area was 87.4
percent residential.

It is believed that more people died from fire in a six-hour time period
than ever before in the history of mankind. At ground zero, the
temperature reached 1,800?‹ Fahrenheit. Flames from the ensuing inferno
were visible for 200 miles. Due to the intense heat, canals boiled over,
metals melted, and human beings burst spontaneously into flames.

By May 1945, 75 percent of the bombs being dropped on Japan were
incendiaries. Cheered on by the likes of Time magazine-who explained
that "properly kindled, Japanese cities will burn like autumn
leaves"-LeMay's campaign took an estimated 672,000 lives.

Radio Tokyo, on the other hand, termed LeMay's tactics "slaughter
bombing" and the Japanese press declared that through the fire raids,
"America has revealed her barbaric character... It was an attempt at
mass murder of women and children... The action of the Americans is all
the more despicable because of the noisy pretensions they constantly
make about their humanity and idealism... No one expects war to be
anything but a brutal business, but it remains for the Americans to make
it systematically and unnecessarily a wholesale horror for innocent
victims."

Rather than denying this, a spokesman for the Fifth Air Force
categorized "the entire population of Japan [as] a proper military
target." Colonel Harry F. Cunningham explained the US policy in no
uncertain terms: "We military men do not pull punches or put on Sunday
school picnics. We are making War and making it in the all-out fashion
which saves American lives, shortens the agony which War is and seeks to
bring about an enduring Peace. We intend to seek out and destroy the
enemy wherever he or she is, in the greatest possible numbers, in the
shortest possible time. For us, THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN."

On the morning of August 6, 1945, before the Hiroshima story broke, a
page-one headline in the Atlanta Constitution read: 580 B-29s RAIN FIRE
ON 4 MORE DEATH-LIST CITIES. Ironically, the success of LeMay's
firebombing raids had effectively eliminated Tokyo from the list of
possible A-bomb targets. There was nothing left to bomb.

LeMay's was later US Air Force chief of staff from 1961 to 1965 when he
immortalized himself by declaring his desire to "bomb [the North
Vietnamese] back into the Stone Age." LeMay also served as vice
presidential candidate on George Wallace's 1968 ticket.

When asked about his role in the Tokyo firebombing, he remarked: "I
suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war
criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side."

Mickey Z. is the author of Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of
"The Good War" on which this article is based. He can be reached at:
mzx2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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