The Significance of American Firebombing

In May of 1945, the US began a firebombing campaign against the Japanese in order to destroy urban infrastructure, hurt civilian populations, and push Japan's government towards an unconditional surrender. Because most of the buildings in their cities such as Tokyo were made out of wood and because the populations in these urban regions were densely-packed, the US military knew that going through with this plan would hurt the Japanese extremely badly and be much more successful than their firebombing attempts in Germany. By flying a few hundred B-29 bombers stripped of most of their guns (to decrease the weight load and allow the planes to carry more bombs) low to the ground and dropping all of their firebombs onto Japan's most populated cities such as Tokyo, the US military was able to destroy hundreds of buildings throughout the country and kill more than a hundred thousand people. According to a History.com article about this subject, during the American firebombing of Shitamachi, a suburb of Tokyo, "the human carnage was so great that the blood-red mists and stench of burning flesh that wafted up sickened the [American] bomber pilots, forcing them to grab oxygen masks to keep from vomiting." Also, the article describes the account of a Japanese doctor who witnessed the bombing, explaining how "'In the black Sumida River, countless bodies were floating, clothed bodies, naked bodies, all black as charcoal. It was unreal." Now, although the bombing was useful to the US because it caused so much damage to Japan as emphasized by these passages (as there was a great amount of "human carnage" and infrastructural destruction), it was considered extremely unethical at the time (mostly by the Japanese themselves) and could eventually be compared to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of their effects. Even though most people today don't necessarily remember the firebombing raids that the US carried out on Japan due to being considered less significant than their attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (since they were the first and only time humans have used nuclear weaponry to attack one another), I feel that they were still very historically significant in how they contributed to the end of the American war with Japan. They weakened the will and strength of the Japanese people, destroyed a good portion of the urban infrastructure protecting them, and wiped out some of their war-producing factories, giving the US a strong edge on the country for winning the war. According to an article by Mark Selden, the senior researcher at the East Asia Program at Cornell University, the firebomb raids "destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities" as "the area of the fire was nearly 100 percent burned; no structure or its contents escaped damage." This shows just how effective the firebombing tactic was for the US in terms of being able to gain a strategic advantage over the Japanese, as it destroyed so many cities, hurt so many people, and inevitably made it more difficult for Japan to defend itself from the Americans. Overall, this is significant, because it shows that even though this firebombing campaign was/is considered extremely unethical, it was still beneficial to the US by hurting the Japanese in many different ways, helping the Americans eventually win the war.