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Inferno: The Firebombing of Japan, March 9-August 15,1945
Did the bombing of Japan's cities―culminating in the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki―hasten the end of World War II? Edwin Hoyt, World War II scholar and author, argues against the U. S. justification of the bombing. In his new book, Inferno , Hoyt shows how the U. S. bombed without discrimination, hurting Japanese civilians far more than the Japanese military. Hoyt accuses Major General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force leader who helped plan the destruction of Dresden, of committing a war crime through his plan to burn Japan's major cities to the ground.
The firebombing raids conducted by LeMay's squadrons caused far more death than the two atomic blasts. Throughout cities built largely from wood, incendiary bombs started raging fires that consumed houses and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The survivors of the raids recount their stories in Inferno , remembering their terror as they fled to shelter through burning cities, escaping smoke, panicked crowds, and collapsing buildings.
Hoyt's descriptions of the widespread death and destruction of Japan depicts a war machine operating without restraint. Inferno offers a provocative look at what may have been America's most brutal policy during the years of World War II.
The firebombing raids conducted by LeMay's squadrons caused far more death than the two atomic blasts. Throughout cities built largely from wood, incendiary bombs started raging fires that consumed houses and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The survivors of the raids recount their stories in Inferno , remembering their terror as they fled to shelter through burning cities, escaping smoke, panicked crowds, and collapsing buildings.
Hoyt's descriptions of the widespread death and destruction of Japan depicts a war machine operating without restraint. Inferno offers a provocative look at what may have been America's most brutal policy during the years of World War II.
- GenresHistory
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Edwin P. Hoyt
239 books31 followersEdwin P. Hoyt was a prolific American writer who specialized in military history. He was born in Portland, Oregon to the publisher Edwin Palmer Hoyt (1897–1979) and his wife, the former Cecile DeVore (1901–1970). A younger brother, Charles Richard, was born in 1928. Hoyt attended the University of Oregon from 1940 to 1943.
In 1943, Hoyt's father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.
Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier's Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.
Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works.
While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes) the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.
Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, after a prolonged illness. He was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the U.S.
In 1943, Hoyt's father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.
Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier's Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.
Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works.
While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes) the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.
Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, after a prolonged illness. He was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the U.S.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 8, 2009
By the third chapter - I was sick of the preachy bias. The author clearly had a message: we shouldn't have bombed Japan the way we did. I disagree with his message. IMHO, if we didn't bomb them - we'd have lost more of our guys in the invasion. Estimates say 10 to 50+ million Japanese would have died had we invaded Japan - as well as over a million allied troops - mostly Americans. It was a no brainer. The bombing ended a conflict that had been raging in the Far East since 1937 (and intermittently long before that).
April 18, 2019
If there is a hell, General Curtis LeMay's soul has been burning there for the last 29 years. LeMay, after his indiscriminate firebombings of Japanese cities killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians, reportedly called the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "icing on the cake".
January 16, 2016
The subtitle is The Firebombing of Japan, March 9-Aug. 15, 1945.
The firebombing of Japan targeted Japanese cities and civilians. The overall death total from the firebombing probably exceeds that of those killed in the atomic bombing. The program was measured in square miles of a city that were effectively destroyed. It was a program that was so effective that, near the end of the war, worthwhile targets to hit were running out.
The author starts out noting two major events of the war, the first being the Holocaust, and the second the firebombing of Japan which killed 300,000, wounded 500,000, and left two million homeless.
In Japan, the people were told to build their own shelters. Subways were too shallow to use for protection.
The first B-29 raid was on Yawata Steel Works on Kyushu. 75 planes were used. The raid did not do significant damage, but was psychologically significant since it was only the second time Japan had been bombed by the U.S. The author then talks about the inaccurate early B-29 bombings.
The book backtracks a little, noting the German blitz of London, and the British and U.S. attacks on Hamburg and Dresden using incendiaries. The person responsible for this was Curtis LeMay, the same man that designed the firebombing program against Japan.
The bombing program was changed from high altitude regular bombing (inaccurate, partially due to wind strength at those altitudes), to low-altitude incendiary bombing, the B-29's stripped down to carry more bombs.
A raid on February 25, 1945 on Tokyo used some incendiaries and destroyed or damaged 28,000 buildings. There was no pretense made of trying to target military places; civilian and military targets alike were fair game.
There are some details of the famed March 9/10 bombing of Tokyo I have not read elsewhere. Winds on the surface had gotten to 80 mph. Messages about planes being sighted were sent by navy picket boats a thousand miles out and received by navy shore stations, but the imperial army was not hooked into the system so they didn't get the alert. Thus, the was basically unexpected.
Fourteen B-29's were shot down in the raid, and another 42 damaged. Air-sea rescues saved five of the fourteen crews. The first plane in was a pathfinder, its job to drop napalm markers to indicate where the other planes should bomb.
A lot of space in the book is taken up with accounts of people who were in the firebombing, and what they saw and what they did to survive. 63% of the commercial district of Tokyo was destroyed. Of the total area destroyed, only 18% was industrial, meaning 82% was civilian businesses and homes.
Nagoya was targeted. The city had spent a lot of effort setting up the best civil defense system in Japan. The particular raid was not as successful as had been hoped, although 2,700 people, mostly women and children were killed in the raid. One very interesting side effect was that the refugees from the area (who were poor, generally), were placed in the better districts of Tokyo and found that the people there were richer and not suffering as much from shortages.
The Japanese propaganda machine inflated the number of B-29s destroyed in the raid. The government, though, began a program of dispersing some of population of cities into the countryside.
>Osaka was then targeted. A plane flew overhead and dropped leaflets warning the people to stay away from military installations which was rather useless since area bombing was being used and not precision bombing. One problem for the Japanese was that possessing a leaflet was a crime, so civilians had to gather up leaflets and turn them in to the police.
>The results of the first raids, in square miles of the city destroyed: Tokyo, 15.8 square miles; Nagoya, 2.1 square miles; Kobe; 2.9 square miles; Nogoya again, 3 square miles; Osaka, 8.1 square miles.
Osaka lost 119 large factories and 200,000 homes.
Kobe was hit, with 56% of the city being destroyed. Then a change was made, with planes carrying both firebombs and regular bombs, the regular bombs to 'discourage' firefighters, destroy electrical lines, and cause confusion. Some cities, like Tokyo and Nagoya, were hit more than once.
The book also tells about how some schoolgirls, who had been forced to work in the post office, ended up in the midst of another B-29 raid which was followed by P-51s strafing targets on the ground, which included them.
Once the larger cities had been dealt with, smaller cities began to be firebombed. One example is Aomori which had 88% of the city destroyed, 1,767 people dead, and 18,000 homes burned. Bombings of other smaller cities is discussed, and then there's a chapter on the use of the atomic bombs.
Because the U.S. demanded an 'unconditional surrender,' many Japanese were worried that their Emperor would be killed or at least removed from power and maybe even tried as a war criminal. The Japanese people were preparing for a last-ditch stand, with civilians using bamboo spears, pitchforks and whatever else they could as potential weapons.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit, and Tokyo seemed to be the next target. Japan surrendered before that, though.
In all, the result of the firebombings went like this: 330,000 civilians dead; 476,000 civilians wounded; 6 million displaced, and at least 2.5 million homes were destroyed.
The author also includes some information on what the U.S. would have faced if they had ended up actually invading Japan proper. The Japanese still had some 10,000 aircraft, over half of which were designated for kamikaze use. 97% of Japan's military supplies were protected, either underground or in hardened facilities. They also had around 2 million soldiers they could call on.
The author says that the U.S. submarines had dealt a major blow to the Japanese economy, but that the U.S. should have also concentrated on destroying the railroads and the power supply system, which was what was done in Germany.
This is an extremely good book on the subject.
The firebombing of Japan targeted Japanese cities and civilians. The overall death total from the firebombing probably exceeds that of those killed in the atomic bombing. The program was measured in square miles of a city that were effectively destroyed. It was a program that was so effective that, near the end of the war, worthwhile targets to hit were running out.
The author starts out noting two major events of the war, the first being the Holocaust, and the second the firebombing of Japan which killed 300,000, wounded 500,000, and left two million homeless.
In Japan, the people were told to build their own shelters. Subways were too shallow to use for protection.
The first B-29 raid was on Yawata Steel Works on Kyushu. 75 planes were used. The raid did not do significant damage, but was psychologically significant since it was only the second time Japan had been bombed by the U.S. The author then talks about the inaccurate early B-29 bombings.
The book backtracks a little, noting the German blitz of London, and the British and U.S. attacks on Hamburg and Dresden using incendiaries. The person responsible for this was Curtis LeMay, the same man that designed the firebombing program against Japan.
The bombing program was changed from high altitude regular bombing (inaccurate, partially due to wind strength at those altitudes), to low-altitude incendiary bombing, the B-29's stripped down to carry more bombs.
A raid on February 25, 1945 on Tokyo used some incendiaries and destroyed or damaged 28,000 buildings. There was no pretense made of trying to target military places; civilian and military targets alike were fair game.
There are some details of the famed March 9/10 bombing of Tokyo I have not read elsewhere. Winds on the surface had gotten to 80 mph. Messages about planes being sighted were sent by navy picket boats a thousand miles out and received by navy shore stations, but the imperial army was not hooked into the system so they didn't get the alert. Thus, the was basically unexpected.
Fourteen B-29's were shot down in the raid, and another 42 damaged. Air-sea rescues saved five of the fourteen crews. The first plane in was a pathfinder, its job to drop napalm markers to indicate where the other planes should bomb.
A lot of space in the book is taken up with accounts of people who were in the firebombing, and what they saw and what they did to survive. 63% of the commercial district of Tokyo was destroyed. Of the total area destroyed, only 18% was industrial, meaning 82% was civilian businesses and homes.
Nagoya was targeted. The city had spent a lot of effort setting up the best civil defense system in Japan. The particular raid was not as successful as had been hoped, although 2,700 people, mostly women and children were killed in the raid. One very interesting side effect was that the refugees from the area (who were poor, generally), were placed in the better districts of Tokyo and found that the people there were richer and not suffering as much from shortages.
The Japanese propaganda machine inflated the number of B-29s destroyed in the raid. The government, though, began a program of dispersing some of population of cities into the countryside.
>Osaka was then targeted. A plane flew overhead and dropped leaflets warning the people to stay away from military installations which was rather useless since area bombing was being used and not precision bombing. One problem for the Japanese was that possessing a leaflet was a crime, so civilians had to gather up leaflets and turn them in to the police.
>The results of the first raids, in square miles of the city destroyed: Tokyo, 15.8 square miles; Nagoya, 2.1 square miles; Kobe; 2.9 square miles; Nogoya again, 3 square miles; Osaka, 8.1 square miles.
Osaka lost 119 large factories and 200,000 homes.
Kobe was hit, with 56% of the city being destroyed. Then a change was made, with planes carrying both firebombs and regular bombs, the regular bombs to 'discourage' firefighters, destroy electrical lines, and cause confusion. Some cities, like Tokyo and Nagoya, were hit more than once.
The book also tells about how some schoolgirls, who had been forced to work in the post office, ended up in the midst of another B-29 raid which was followed by P-51s strafing targets on the ground, which included them.
Once the larger cities had been dealt with, smaller cities began to be firebombed. One example is Aomori which had 88% of the city destroyed, 1,767 people dead, and 18,000 homes burned. Bombings of other smaller cities is discussed, and then there's a chapter on the use of the atomic bombs.
Because the U.S. demanded an 'unconditional surrender,' many Japanese were worried that their Emperor would be killed or at least removed from power and maybe even tried as a war criminal. The Japanese people were preparing for a last-ditch stand, with civilians using bamboo spears, pitchforks and whatever else they could as potential weapons.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit, and Tokyo seemed to be the next target. Japan surrendered before that, though.
In all, the result of the firebombings went like this: 330,000 civilians dead; 476,000 civilians wounded; 6 million displaced, and at least 2.5 million homes were destroyed.
The author also includes some information on what the U.S. would have faced if they had ended up actually invading Japan proper. The Japanese still had some 10,000 aircraft, over half of which were designated for kamikaze use. 97% of Japan's military supplies were protected, either underground or in hardened facilities. They also had around 2 million soldiers they could call on.
The author says that the U.S. submarines had dealt a major blow to the Japanese economy, but that the U.S. should have also concentrated on destroying the railroads and the power supply system, which was what was done in Germany.
This is an extremely good book on the subject.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews