air war

Review: The Bomber Mafia

by Paul Ham

If Curtis LeMay's firebombing broke the will of the Japanese public, nobody remembered to tell the Japanese. Malcolm Gladwell's praise of LeMay suffers from overlooking the Japanese side of the bombing campaign.

Opinion: 75 Years On, Remember Hiroshima And Nagasaki. But Remember Toyama Too

by Cary Karacas and David Fedman

AAF officials commonly used sanitizing language to mask the fact that they were targeting entire cities for destruction. Press releases described attacks not on cities, but on "industrial urban areas." Tactical reports set their sights not on densely populated neighborhoods, but on "worker housing."

‘We Hated What We Were Doing’: Veterans Recall Firebombing Japan

American airmen who took part in the 1945 firebombing missions grapple with the particular horror they witnessed being inflicted on those below.