Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
That, though, had far more of a logical basis than some of the other carpetbomb plans. One of the main impediments to reining the Japanese in was their belief in the infallibility of the Emperor, and the corrollary belief that their homeland could never be touched/breached/damaged. In that case, there was a well-grounded thought that the Japanese morale needed to be hurt with a measure of damage thay they considered impossible, and the Tokyo bombings actually accomplished that to some degree.
Not to defend the carnage - just to make the abstract point.
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By the time Tokyo was firebombed, there had been an awful lot of damage in Japan. I'm not saying that it couldn't be rationalized at the time, but so can many war crimes. The idea that you can bomb another country into giving up is, as it turns out, pretty dubious, though we always like to pretend that it will happen. Spanky points to Serbia as an exception to my rule, which is fair, but doesn't take you very far.
