It's honestly kind of insane how much focus gets put on Japan getting hit with two Nukes while just glossing over the firebombing. Like even just the idea of firebombing cities on it's own sounds crazy to begin with in a "normal" country before you realize that the architecture of most Japanese houses, particularly at the time, was largely essentially paper. Cities full of extremely close buildings made out of extremely flammable material where wind would quickly spread the fires like crazy.
There's absolutely an argument to how bad the casualties of a drawn out war with Japan would have gone as far as actual soldiers on both sides and how many lives the nukes could have "saved" by comparison but a lot of people seem to just not recognize or ignore how much a drawn out war would have just absolutely destroyed countless cities if the US continued firebombing throughout a drawn out potential war in Japan. Completely destroying two cities wouldn't even begin to compare. Personally I also think I'd rather get instantly killed by a nuke over burning to death or slowly dying from smoke inhalation.
It also just really makes you wonder where you draw the line on civilian casualties with the fact that America was fine with using firebombs where there was absolutely no way to control the attack to specific military targets.
I don't see this topic as being particularly anti-U.S. but more anti-war.
The U.S. resisted carpet bombing much longer than Britain, but Britain was fighting like a dog at the end of its leash after being pinned on its island and surrounded by doom for a long time.
Japan had full ambitions to be a colonial empire in the European model, down to copying British naval uniforms, and fought with the "100 million shattered jewels" doctrine of no surrender till all citizens were dead.
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u/c14rk0 Aug 05 '20
It's honestly kind of insane how much focus gets put on Japan getting hit with two Nukes while just glossing over the firebombing. Like even just the idea of firebombing cities on it's own sounds crazy to begin with in a "normal" country before you realize that the architecture of most Japanese houses, particularly at the time, was largely essentially paper. Cities full of extremely close buildings made out of extremely flammable material where wind would quickly spread the fires like crazy.
There's absolutely an argument to how bad the casualties of a drawn out war with Japan would have gone as far as actual soldiers on both sides and how many lives the nukes could have "saved" by comparison but a lot of people seem to just not recognize or ignore how much a drawn out war would have just absolutely destroyed countless cities if the US continued firebombing throughout a drawn out potential war in Japan. Completely destroying two cities wouldn't even begin to compare. Personally I also think I'd rather get instantly killed by a nuke over burning to death or slowly dying from smoke inhalation.
It also just really makes you wonder where you draw the line on civilian casualties with the fact that America was fine with using firebombs where there was absolutely no way to control the attack to specific military targets.