# Why did US planners think Japan had to be invaded? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2014, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786 "2014-09-18T01:27:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/101 "2014-10-24T19:38:56Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > Not buying your argument. Read what he wrote. You two are in agreement. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/102 "2014-10-24T19:54:57Z")
Please consider that Americans felt that Japanese Americans were going to help downed aviators kill citizens, and probably eat them afterwards. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/103 "2014-10-24T19:55:18Z")
> [@Bookkeeper](#): > > The bolded part of the quote from **Dissonance’s** post is the point I was trying to make. While attacking Germany’s industrial base could largely be done by bombing the industrial areas of cities (if bombing accuracy had been up to the task), significant parts of Japan’s industry were spread throughout otherwise residential areas. The only purpose of bombing housing in Germany was to attack the civilian workforce. For Japan it was a secondary effect of attacking the industrial capacity. Then it isn’t much of a point that you are making. In both cases the civilian workforce itself was as much of a target as the physical factory floor. The following sentence in the quote which you clearly want to ignore is: **It was also estimated that these attacks would kill over 500,000 people, render about 7.75 million homeless and force almost 3.5 million to be evacuated.** Both Germany and Japan dispersed large production facilities for such things as aircraft engine production and aircraft assembly as much as possible against their wishes in the face of the bombing campaigns. They would much preferred to have larger, more concentrated facilities for the efficiency, but doing so was unfeasible in the face of a bombing offensive; Japan only started dispersing such plants once the US bombing campaign began as her need for aircraft was so woefully below her ability to produce them and paid the price in a steep slump in production once the hurried dispersal began. > [@Bookkeeper](#): > > I don’t doubt that attacking Japan’s civilian workforce was seen as a \*desirable \*secondary effect, but nonetheless there was a better justification for the attacks than just “dehousing”. It wasn’t a secondary effect, it was a primary effect. Again, under total war theory the factory worker is him or herself a target as much as the soldier is. The difference between Germany and Japan was that Japan was much more vulnerable to such attacks than Germany was. While it was possible for firestorms to occur such as what happened at Hamburg, Dresden, and other cities in Germany causing one was in the hands of fate, chance, and meteorological conditions which the Allies could neither predict nor control; burning out the most densely populated urban areas of German cities wasn’t a matter of simply dropping incendiaries on them, European housing was brick and cement. What made firebombing Japan a much easier task was that the housing in the most densely populated urban areas of cities was made out of paper and wood; starting a firestorm in a Japanese city _was_ simply a matter of dropping incendiaries on it. A picture being worth a thousand words, this difference can clearly be seen in looking at the post-firestorm damage in [Dresden](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-Z0309-310%2C_Zerst%C3%B6rtes_Dresden.jpg), [Hamburg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command%2C_1942-1945._CL3400.jpg), [Tokyo](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Tokyo_1945-3-10-1.jpg), and [Osaka](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Osaka_after_the_1945_air_raid.JPG). In the case of the German cities the burned out husks of buildings where people used to live still stand, in Japanese cities there is virtually nothing left standing, the buildings where people used to live have been burned into ash. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Ad hominem, and uninteresting. Have a nice whatever. Yes, clearly I’m the one interjecting “affected emotional contrivances”. It’s not an ad hominem to call your statement ludicrous when your statement is in fact clearly and demonstrably entirely at odds with the actual facts of the matter, which is what this statement is: > [@Trinopus](#): > > And, no, the allies never deliberately sought to cause civilian deaths. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/104 "2014-10-24T20:08:10Z")
I believe that the way the military minds, both American and British worked, was to consider that they had many, many aircraft and lots of bombs. They needed to drop them _somewhere._ ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/105 "2014-10-24T21:08:00Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > It was racist in that you could look at a guy and tell that he was Japanese. Coupled with the Hawaiian Japanese helping the downed pilot. > If Americans whose ancestors came from Germany were readily identifiable, I would imagine they would have also been interned. Nah, we got all the stupid anti-German sentiment out twenty years earlier with World War I. While the treatment of Japanese Americans was worse, the reaction to anything German in World War I was pretty damn bad and stupid as well. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/106 "2014-10-24T21:49:56Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Nah, we got all the stupid anti-German sentiment out twenty years earlier with World War I. While the treatment of Japanese Americans was worse, the reaction to anything German in World War I was pretty damn bad and stupid as well. My afore mentioned Grandmother, 18 in 1918, was firmly convinced that the German Q boat crews ate babies. 🙂 And she grew up on Stuttgart, Arkansas among German Americans of whom she was rather fond. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/107 "2014-10-24T23:11:41Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I believe that the way the military minds, both American and British worked, was to consider that they had many, many aircraft and lots of bombs. They needed to drop them _somewhere._ This is like saying that the fire department starts fires because all that water in the fire hydrants needs to be used for _something_. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/108 "2014-10-24T23:20:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This is like saying that the fire department starts fires because all that water in the fire hydrants needs to be used for _something_. Well, no, not quite. It is, I think, more like saying that the fire department likes to send out major pump-and-ladder units even to little backyard barbecue fires, and to deploy the big hoses sometimes when the little hoses would work. It’s difficult for organizations to have resources…and not use them. That’s very different from saying that they commit evil conspiracies to increase the opportunities for such use. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/109 "2014-10-25T06:15:10Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > … was because of unprecedented intervention by Hirohito–and he was almost assassinated for his trouble. Can you give me a link/cite on this? This is just the kind of political dirty dealing that I love to read about. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/110 "2014-10-25T06:18:18Z")
> [@chacoguy](#): > > _And they weren’t WHITE._ It wasn’t enough to contain them, they needed to be eradicated. I think that you’re a little off in this. The ethnic makeup of the Soviet Union wasn’t all ‘white’ as you suppose. IIRC, my friend’s wife, newly from Russia about 10 years ago, said that a huge percentage of the USSR looked/is/are Asian, and about 1/2 of, uh, whatever state/province/etc… she lived in (Uzbekistan?) looked Vietnamese. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/111 "2014-10-25T06:22:44Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, no, not quite. It is, I think, more like saying that the fire department likes to send out major pump-and-ladder units even to little backyard barbecue fires, and to deploy the big hoses sometimes when the little hoses would work. > > It’s difficult for organizations to have resources…and not use them. That’s very different from saying that they commit evil conspiracies to increase the opportunities for such use. Ok, that is a better analogy. Mine was hastily constructed. But if I’m not mistaken, the incendiary bombs were made to be dropped on Japan and were not something sitting in stock for years. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/112 "2014-10-25T06:27:09Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I think that you’re a little off in this. The ethnic makeup of the Soviet Union wasn’t all ‘white’ as you suppose. IIRC, my friend’s wife, newly from Russia about 10 years ago, said that a huge percentage of the USSR looked/is/are Asian, and about 1/2 of, uh, whatever state/province/etc… she lived in (Uzbekistan?) looked Vietnamese. Uzbeks look Vietnamese? That seems like quite a stretch. [Uzbeks](https://www.google.com/search?q=uzbeks&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ykFLVOz2CoioyQSltYCwDg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667) look like Central Asians. [Vietnamese](https://www.google.com/search?q=uzbeks&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ykFLVOz2CoioyQSltYCwDg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667#tbm=isch&q=vietnamese) look like East Asians. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/113 "2014-10-25T15:59:56Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Ok, that is a better analogy. Mine was hastily constructed. > But if I’m not mistaken, the incendiary bombs were made to be dropped on Japan and were not something sitting in stock for years. They’re all very, very bad analogies. Forget the incendiary bombs; the B-29 wasn’t in stock. The B-29 program was extremely expensive, at $3 billion it cost more than the Manhattan Project which cost $2 billion; both figures were rather huge sums of money in 1941. The USAAF didn’t throw $3 billion into the program to produce and build the largest and most powerful heavy bomber in history at the time and not know what it was getting, Hap Arnold was deeply personally involved [in the process](http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/B/-/B-29_Superfortress.htm): > [@](#): > > The beginnings of the B-29 program can be traced back to June 1939, when the Kilmer Board called for a very long-range bomber to be procured by 1944. “Hap” Arnold initiated the design program for the new bomber on 10 November 1939 and the Air Corps published a formal specification the next month. Boeing had been working on a new advanced bomber design to replace the B-17 since March 1938, and the company immediately began revising their design to meet the new specification. The Air Corps awarded Boeing a contract for the B-29 in September 1940 and the first prototype flew on 21 September 1942. > The B-29 was a huge gamble. The program ultimately cost $3 billion dollars, versus $2 billion for the Manhattan Project that developed the nuclear bomb. Hap Arnold was understandably determined to do whatever was necessary to make the program succeed. His deputy, Lauris Norstad, later said that “Arnold’s life was that B-29 … he was into every damn detail of that B-29” (Wolk 2010). Corners were cut in development and procurement, included ordering 500 production aircraft at the same time as the prototype. These began coming off the assembly line in September 1943. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/114 "2014-10-25T16:02:06Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, no, not quite. It is, I think, more like saying that the fire department likes to send out major pump-and-ladder units even to little backyard barbecue fires, and to deploy the big hoses sometimes when the little hoses would work. > > It’s difficult for organizations to have resources…and not use them. That’s very different from saying that they commit evil conspiracies to increase the opportunities for such use. There are some elements of this which I agree, and others don’t fit that well. While it is true that the strategic bombing command was attempting to become more relevant in the war, and however much they were thinking post war budgets at that point, and the need to use the costly B-24s as massive killing machines, in hindsight people forget the overwhelming desire to get the war over even one day sooner at whatever the cost. A better analogy would be is that if you are playing whack-a-mole you use whatever you have in your hand. If it’s a plastic hammer you use that. Once you get a real shotgun, then things go much quicker. With the benefit of postwar interviews of the enemy, reading whatever material they didn’t destroy and years of scholarship and analysis, we can look at what was a barbecue and what was a forest fire, but in the fog of war they simply did not know for certain what was the “minimum” necessary force to the war to a conclusion. Hell, I doubt that even now we would know what was an approach which would have been as effective an obtaining their surrender that quickly yet would have resulted in significantly fewer civilian deaths. We were reading their top secret diplomatic mail to their embassy in Moscow, and we knew their offered terms to settle were going to be absurd. If you read any of the material concerning the positioning strategy of the US in the summer of '45, this lack on certainty is clear. While personally knowing people who were directly affected by both the firebombing and the atomic bombing, and saying this with all the due consideration it deserves, I believe that it probably took both of these evil weapons to combat the even greater evil which had to be stopped at whatever the cost. > [@handsomeharry](#): > > Can you give me a link/cite on this? This is just the kind of political dirty dealing that I love to read about. It’s the [Kyujo incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_Incident). There was a real concern that the IJA extremists (as redundant as that may seem) would refuse to surrender and attempt a coup. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The Doolittle Raiders were ordered to not bomb the Imperial palace. That has always struck me as odd. Destroying their Emperor, believed to be divine, would have been a great way to lower morale and illustrate how determined and strong the United States was. > > I would have chosen if not the Japanese of German leadership, the greatest troop concentration they had. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Japanese concept of the divinity of the emperor, and would have resulted in a protracted fight to the last man standing. It would have been a horrible, horrible mistake, which is why the US wisely did not target the palace. The Western conception of the divine is colored by the Judeo Christian / Muslim tradition of an all-powerful supreme being. The emperor was more what most Westerns would consider “holy” than having any inherent supernatural powers. Nationals symbols, be they are often help up as encouragement to fight even harder. Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor. The emperor was seen as the symbolic embodiment of the _Yamato_ tradition, the fundamental nature of Japan. At the very end, after Japanese islands themselves had been violated by foreign troops, the firebombing, the near complete blockade, the humiliating and complete destruction of what had briefly been the most power navy in the Pacific, the two atomic bombs and (in their eyes) the betrayal of the Soviets, which left them with no diplomatic solution, the hardliners still wanted to fight to preserve two institutions: the emperor and the _kokutai_ a concept maddeningly impossible to translation into English. It’s been called the “national policy” but it’s more like the Japanese “way of life.” Growing up in the 60s and 70s, the sentiment “better dead than red” was commonly heard. Certainly the Japanese military would agree with that sentiment. While the vast majority of imperial military leadership was set on preserving _kokutai_ which enshrined their position atop society, the emperor was willing to throw them under the bus to ensure the continuation of the emperor system in some form. Had the US bombed and killed the emperor, I believe the other powers within Japan and the popular opinion would have hardened to the point of requiring an invasion. At the very least, it certainly would not have broken the will of the people. Another decidedly negative outcome is that the military, essentially in charge of the government would have been the king maker in selecting the Hirohito’s replacement. They would have replaced him with someone far more hawkish. Nothing good would have come from it. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/115 "2014-10-25T23:50:10Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Uzbeks look Vietnamese? That seems like quite a stretch. [Uzbeks](https://www.google.com/search?q=uzbeks&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ykFLVOz2CoioyQSltYCwDg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667) look like Central Asians. [Vietnamese](https://www.google.com/search?q=uzbeks&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ykFLVOz2CoioyQSltYCwDg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=667#tbm=isch&q=vietnamese) look like East Asians. WhateverTF; whole point being the Japanese were easily as ‘white’ as many of the countrymen of the ones who were in accord in re: nuking them. Chacoguy’s too officious cage rattling being muted. BTW, I’m no expert, but, in the photos I saw of said Russki babe, with Uzbek (??) cops, the cops looked more similar to the Vietnamese with whom I worked, and less like the Uzbek link that you provided. Thanks for the link, btw. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/116 "2014-10-25T23:54:56Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > It’s the [Kyujo incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_Incident). There was a real concern that the IJA extremists (as redundant as that may seem) would refuse to surrender and attempt a coup. > > This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Japanese concept of the divinity of the emperor, and would have resulted in a protracted fight to the last man standing. It would have been a horrible, horrible mistake, which is why the US wisely did not target the palace. Thank you kindly. hh ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/117 "2014-10-26T00:17:09Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > . . . But if I’m not mistaken, the incendiary bombs were made to be dropped on Japan and were not something sitting in stock for years. Very true; they were developed with Japanese architecture in mind. They were intended to be devastating. My only point is that they were not intended to kill civilians. They were intended to destroy enemy industry, and civilian deaths were a collateral cost. The allies were not one whit deterred by the cost in enemy civilian casualties. The bombing was terribly callous in this way. But the intent was never to kill enemy civilians, and claims that this was the case are grossly ignorant. > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > . . . A better analogy would be is that if you are playing whack-a-mole you use whatever you have in your hand. . . . That is essentially what I was trying to get at with the comparison to firefighters using whatever hoses they have with them. > [@](#): > > If it’s a plastic hammer you use that. Once you get a real shotgun, then things go much quicker. The sad thing is that, sometimes, the plastic hammer might have been more appropriate than the shotgun. The massive firestorms over Tokyo were probably not necessary. A more “surgical” approach might have been as effective, overall, as keeping Japanese airplanes from the sky. The only defense worth offering is that the allied planners had no way to know this. They waged the most effective war that they knew how to make. We can make lots of different judgements in hindsight, but if any one of us had been a high-level Army Air Force strategist, we’d very likely have been driven to the same conclusions. As you and I have both said several times in this thread, the very nature of the war, by itself, drove both sides to actions that are extraordinarily ugly. Toss in the cultural disconnects – the classic example of Japanese contempt for allied soldiers who would surrender, such an action being considered a cowardly betrayal of the ideals of Bushido – and, of course, allied racism in the theater of war – and you get one butt-ugly conflict. Again, the only real argument I’m here to make is that the allies never intended to kill Japanese civilians. That’s a slur I will not allow to go unanswered. The truth is nasty enough; artificially levering it up into accusations of deliberate intentional evil is crappy history…and crappy debate. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/118 "2014-10-26T05:26:54Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > Not buying your argument. Stating that Axis Nationals, (Axis POWs) and Japanese Americans under lock and key are somehow the same thing is just plain wrong and illogical. > > Japanese Americans were interned because they were Japanese. Not because any crime they committed, or were imminently going to commit. > > German Americans were not interned > > Italian Americans were not. > > There was blatant racism against Asian American people, particularly on the west coast since well before the 20th century. That’s why the were interned. Did you read my post? All Axis citizens, German, Italian or Japanese were interned. This is normal during war. That wasnt racist.German Citizens _were_ interned. I then said but the USA went further in interning _American citizens of Japanese decent_- which WAS racist. Read. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/119 "2014-10-26T13:06:50Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > My only point is that they were not intended to kill civilians. They were intended to destroy enemy industry, and civilian deaths were a collateral cost. > [@](#): > > The allies were not one whit deterred by the cost in enemy civilian casualties. The bombing was terribly callous in this way. But the intent was never to kill enemy civilians, and claims that this was the case are grossly ignorant. > [@](#): > > Again, the only real argument I’m here to make is that the allies never intended to kill Japanese civilians. That’s a slur I will not allow to go unanswered. The truth is nasty enough; artificially levering it up into accusations of deliberate intentional evil is crappy history…and crappy debate. Can you help me understand this argument? There is a wealth of documentation proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the Allies fully intended to destroy Axis cities by indiscriminate bombing. To take just [one of any thousands of cites](http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/war.crimes/World.war.2/Bombing.htm)on the Net: > [@](#): > > "The Prime Minister said that we hoped to shatter twenty German cities as we had shattered Cologne, Lubeck, Dusseldorf, and so on. More and more aeroplanes and bigger and bigger bombs. M. Stalin had heard of 2-ton bombs. We had now begun to use 4-ton bombs, and this would be continued throughout the winter. If need be, as the war went on, we hoped to shatter almost every dwelling in almost every German city. " (Official transcript of the meeting at the Kremlin between Churchill and Stalin on Wednesday, August 12, 1942, at 7 P.M.) > > “The destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany [is the goal]. … It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.” – “Air Marshal Arthur Harris to Sir Arthur Street, Under Secretary of State, Air Ministry, October 25, 1943” quoted in Tami Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 220. The Allies lacked the ability to conduct precision bombing on the scale required to win the war. The only remaining alternative was massive bombings of the sort Harris refers to. Even the most superficial study of the bombing campaigns on both theaters by both the US and Britain clearly show this. Here’s [a link to some text](http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=eMEwSMjnbBMC&lpg=PT10&ots=mIid_CTEO0&dq=general%20arnold%20bombing%20civilians&hl=ja&pg=PT10#v=onepage&q=general%20arnold%20bombing%20civilians&f=false) within _[Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History](http://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Civilians-A-Twentieth-Century-History/dp/1595585478)_ There shouldn’t be an disagreement on this fact. If you wish to argue it, be my guest, read this article and then rebut it. Good luck. I don’t follow your logic. You claim that stating the facts is a slur. Was Harris slurring himself? Was General Arnold? (Please google their names if you don’t know who they are, this debate requires at least a passing familiarity with them.) You and I have agreed that it was a necessary act. It was horrible. Terrible. It should never have had to be done, but it was done. To deny that ranks up with the other deniers of history. Note that the quote from Harris talks about killing “workers.” Certainly one can assume the planning sessions did not include reminders that they were attempting to kill as many babies and grandmas as possible, yet that is what they were trying to do. Only they would use terms such as maximum percentage destroyed, as if these residential areas were simply empty houses. Truman was very careful to have a legal fiction created that the atomic bomb targets be “military” and that the civilian casualties be what we now term collateral. However this fiction is easily disproved by looking at the target points in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the other intended cities. They were not aiming for the military or the industrial areas, they were looking to maximize the damage to civilians. If that can be so easily proven, why would it be assumed that his was not the case for the firebombs? Likewise, please respond to my point in an earlier post, that the great Tokyo firebomb raid targeted the areas with the highest residential density, which did not target the mixed industrial areas as well as subsequent raids which targeted smaller and smaller cities. We both agree that it was necessary. Very ugly, but necessary. The only disagreement is that you are claiming, against one of the best documented events in world history, a fact which you cannot support. The Allies targeted civilians in a terrible act which was required to stop evil and killed over a million enemy civilians to prevent the loss of tens of millions of other civilians. Only the drive-by OP is claiming that Allied actions were evil, you have created a strawman which does your careful arguments a disservice. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2014, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786/120 "2014-10-26T14:12:27Z")
> [@spifflog](#): > > I also think we need to be careful about being judgmental on historical events using our current perspectives. There are many things that were acceptable even 20 or 30 years ago that we won’t dream of doing now. So judging events from 70 years ago with our social mores of today is problematic. So true. The OP (plus many other comments in this thread) are only statements that can be made 50-60-70 years after the fact and from the confines of a relatively safe country and society. Make those statements back in 1945 and most 95% of the USA would think your looney beyond belief. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-us-planners-think-japan-had-to-be-invaded/698786.md?page=7)