Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

by Max Hastings

The material damage inflicted upon Japanese industry by LeMay’s offensive was almost irrelevant, because blockade and raw-material starvation had already brought the economy to the brink of collapse. Many raids burnt out factories where production was already flagging or halted. Yet no nation could regard with indifference the destruction of a large proportion of its urban housing, whatever the protestations of the Japanese military to the contrary. It seems essential to acknowledge the psychological impact of the B-29 campaign. No human being of any culture could fail to be impressed, indeed awed, by such a display of the enemy’s might and his own nation’s impotence. It seems impossible to doubt that, when Japanese surrender eventually came, it was influenced in some degree by the U.S. bomber offensive which preceded and indeed followed Hiroshima. It remains unlikely that the Twentieth Air Force’s contribution justified its huge moral and material cost to the United States. It seems absurd, however, to deny its contribution to the collapse of Japan’s will to resist.