Blankets of Fire

The book is about the American firebombing of Japan during World War II, an undertaking that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of square miles of various cities, It was a program aimed to destroy the “cottage industry” type productions that were spread throughout the civilian areas, and it was also to terrorize the people.

What I will do is only point up some of the highlights of this excellent book.

One thing the book does is to point out that German cities, 95% of them, were constructed of brick and stone. Thus, firebombing would have been of limited usage against those cities. Japanese cities, on the other hand, had 80% built with paper and wood, making them ideal targets for firebombing.

Another advantage to bombing Japanese cities were how crowded they were, thus making the task of fighting fires even more difficult than in German cities.

The B-29, although in the end an excellent bomber, in the beginnings had numerous problems. They were the biggest and most advanced of the bombers and had their share of bugs and more. A lot of the bomber losses were due to technical problems, not necessarily being shot down by the Japanese.

Originally, the B-29s used high level bombing, but that had a number of problems, all of which led to decreased accuracy. Such problems included weather, clouds, the jet stream, other winds, etc. The bombing project was not overly successful until the altitude of the planes was reduced. Theoretically, this would be more dangerous for the planes, but the Japanese anti-aircraft defenses were not considered extremely strong.

As to the Japanese civil defenses, they were not good, either. There were inadequate shelters, too few firefighters, and relatively poor equipment for fighting the fires. Windbreaks were created by tearing down houses, hoping that the open spaces would stop the spread of fire, but they didn't anticipate the incredible strength of the fires, strength that allowed the fires to spread wildly despite the firebreaks and firefighters.

”Press releases, public relations strategy, and public statements couldn't change the facts: nighttime incendiary bombing was a weapon of area destruction, not precision bombing. Fire raids destroyed homes, hospitals, and schools, as well as factories, and killed lots of people, mainly women, children, and old me. ...Japanese morale became a target along with physical objects.”

In other words, the various claims by the government that the bombing was strictly to destroy the ability of the Japanese to produce weapons was not the whole story by any means.

The bombings produced so much fire and heat that the B-29s thousands of feet above the fires were subjected to major turbulence. Plane crews noted that, during one of the bombings of Tokyo, the fires could be seen a hundred miles away.

This bombing raid in early March on Tokyo destroyed 16 square miles of the city, destroying over 10,000 acres, and killed around 100,000 people. This would be equal to taking Berkeley, California, and wiping out the entire city.

And that was just one raid.

Kobe was hit soon after, destroying 3 square miles of that city and killing 8,000 people. By the end of the first set of raids, the bombers had destroyed 31.9 square miles of the four largest Japanese cities.

One of the things the book talks about that proved to be quite effective was the use of B-29s in laying mines. By the end of the war the mining program plus US ships basically blockaded the entire country, preventing the influx of much-needed raw materials. The Japanese by that time had so few ships left that they were saving them for kamikaze attacks during any invasion of the home islands. Their air force was also greatly reduced in its effectiveness, again with many planes being saved for the expected invasion.

The codename of the mining operation was Operation Starvation.

Bombings in the March through June, 1945 time period included another 13 plus square miles of Tokyo destroyed, 3.4 square miles of Kawasaki, 1.5 square miles of Yokohama, and another 6 square miles of Tokyo.

”By mid-June...The seventeen XXI Bomber Command Attacks had laid waste 102 square miles of Japanese cities, about half of Tokyo, one-third of Nagoya, over half of Kobe, and one-quarter of Osaka. The program had become so effective that the targets went from being the largest cities to those of population from 80,000 to 300,000. This resulted in almost half of the built-up areas of that group of cities being destroyed. The Americans even began dropping leaflets, saying so many cities out of a list of cities on the leaflet would be destroyed, then carried through with the warning. This was obviously to cause the Japanese public to feel helpless.

The author also writes about the use of the atomic bomb and, in his opinion, the bomb was used to shorten the war, although he also admits that racism and Pearl Harbor made it easier to use the bomb against the Japanese, although he also says it probably would have been used against Germany if it had been available earlier.

The second bomb was dropped for major psychological effect, and to show that we had more bombs and would use them.

The city of Kokura would have become the second city bombed, except that weather conditions there were not acceptable, so the pilot flew to the secondary target, which was Nagasaki.

The summary was 66 cities attacked by firebombing. 178 total square miles of cities was destroyed, amounting to 43% of the built-up area of the cities. The deaths caused were around 330,000 by US measurement, and around 241,000 by Japanese measurement. 476,000 people were injured, and there were 2.3 million homes lost.

Industrial output had been cut in half. Aircraft production was down 60%, shipbuilding down 75%, and production of ordinance was down about 55%. Thus, the Japanese were still able to produce weapons for war, but at a much-reduced number.

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