Bombs were dropped intentionally on unarmed civilians in their homes or at work. Was the indiscriminate (meaning the target was the city, usually the city center, and not military installations) American bombing of urban areas democide (mass murder), that is, the intentional targeting of unarmed civilians with deadly weapons? I don't see how this can be denied. The best sources? Kennett, Lee, A History Of Strategic Bombing (1982), and particularly, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (European Theater), and United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific Theater).ġ. If I recall his words correctly, he thought the Japanese deserved it. For Japan, precision bombing was the rule until the above mentioned General LeMay took over the 20th and 21st bomber Commands, and initiated the firebombing of Japanese cities. In Europe, its loss of bombers became such that it adopted the British strategy of nighttime, indiscriminate urban bombing. I will mention, however, that the United States began its strategic bombing campaign by legal (according to international law) daylight "precision bombing" of military targets in or around urban areas. Equally indiscriminate bombing of German cities by the United States and Britain may have killed about 410,000 German civilians.Īside from these death tolls, I don't want to deal with the nature and sorry history of strategic bombing for the United State and Great Britain. In the war overall, bombing of Japanese cities might have killed about 337,000, including my estimate of 165,000 by atomic bombs, the quintessential city and civilian killers. Before getting into this, I should note that just on the fire bombing of March 9-10, 1944, near 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed, more than died in the Hiroshima atomic bombing. McNamara, Larry Calloway points out that McNamara said in an interview with Morris, "hat when LeMay served under him in the Kennedy administration, the old general commented that if Japan had won the war they both would have been charged for acting like war criminals." To many, including especially those who served in the military during the war, this is ridiculous, morally absurd. In his article, HREF="">"The Firebombing Of Japan: An Apology- Errol Morris Presents Robert S. McNamara, then a lieutenant colonel, who in the 1960s would become the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. The worst of these democidal bombings was the firebombing of Japanese cities, almost entirely carried out by American bombers, and designed and commanded by General Curtis LeMay. In my Statistics of Democide, Chapter 13 "Death By American Bombing and Other Democide,", I listed American indiscriminate urban bombing of Germany and Japan as democide-murder by government (I include elsewhere in the book such bombing by Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan).
Over 41,000 of the total are presumed lost at sea.Commentary: Was American WWII Bombing Democide? military personnel, including 72,350 from World War II, 7,550 from the Korean War and 1,584 from the Vietnam War. Worldwide, there are more than 81,600 missing U.S. The evidence, which includes possible human bones as well as potential remnants of the aircraft, has been transported to a laboratory in the U.S. In the intervening decades, the crash site "like most others in the Mediterranean region, was scavenged for metal, the land restored to its original use,'' Vella said. military officials, but the other five airmen remained missing. One crew member was located immediately and buried in the town's cemetery. aircraft about two kilometers (just over a mile) from the Sciacca airport, Vella said. A German military report documented the crash of a U.S. It was shot down as it targeted a camouflaged German airstrip amid olive groves and pastureland on July 10, 1943. The North American B-25 Mitchell heavy bomber with a crew of six was one of 52 air losses with missing personnel in the area during WWII, mostly during 1943 as the Allies pushed into southeastern Sicily. "We owe (their) families accurate answers,'' Vella told the Associated Press Thursday. This year's dig uncovered wreckage "consistent only to a B-25 aircraft,'' said archaeologist Clive Vella, the scientific director of the expedition, contributing to hopes that any confirmed remains would be linked to the missing crew. The site near Sciacca was identified in 2017 by investigators using historical records and metal detectors. The six-week dig that ended this week was carried out by a team from the Pentagon's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which locates and identifies missing U.S.