Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The choice of incendiary bombs, where did that come from?
I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs.
I think the issue is:
In order to win a war should you kill 100.000 people in one night?
by firebombing or any other way.
LeMay's answer would be clearly "yes".
McNamara, do you mean to say,
that instead of burning to death 100.000 Japanese civilians that night,
we should have burned to dead a lesser number, or none ?
and then have our soldiers across the beaches in Tokyo
being slaughtered in tenths of thousands?
Is that what you are proposing?, is that moral?, is that wise?
¿Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb
if LeMay was burning up Japan?
And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities.
58% of Yokohama, which is roughly the size of Cleveland,
58% of Cleveland destroyed.
Tokio is roughly the size of New York, 51% of New York destroyed.
99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which is Toyama.
40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which is Nagoya.
This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb !
which by the way, was dropped by LeMay's command.
Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities
and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs,
is not proportional, in the minds of some people,
to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb.
The US-Japanese war was one of the most brutal wars in Human History.
Kamikaze pilots, suicides... unbelievable!
What one could criticize is that the human race prior to that time,
and today! has not really grappled with what are "the rules of war".
¿Was there a rule saying that you shouldn't bomb, kill,
you shouldn't burn to death, 100.000 civilians in one night?
LeMay said: "If we had lost the war,
we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals."
And I think he is right!
He, and I say I, were behaving as war criminals.
LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral
if his side did lost.
But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?