BOMBERS OVER JAPAN
By MAJOR E. W. SHEPI'ARI)
THE United States Strategic Boinbing Survey, whose report on the results of Allied air attacks on Germany was analysed in The Spectator a few weeks ago, has now issued a similar report on the effect of air power on the war against Japan. This second report
thus covers a wider field than the earlier one, but as some of the facts and figures contained in it have been published before, I shall confine myself here mainly to an analysis of the sections dealing with the air operations against Japan's home territory. These operations could be begun only after the American capture of the Mariana Islands in November, 1944, and as in the earlier stages their main purpose was to prepare the way for invasion, the principal targets were aircraft factories, arsenals and oil refineries, rather than the basic elements of Japan's social, economic and political fabric. Day- light attacks on her railway and transportation system were only just getting under way when the war ended, though night bombing of urban areas had been going on for some six months. Nevertheless, in this short period 16o,000 tons of bombs, a quarter of the whole tonnage dropped in the Pacific war, fell on Japan's home territory, by far the greater portion in the period March-August, 1945.
The concentrated attacks on Japanese cities were as devastating
as those against Germany, though they lasted for a shorter time ; this was largely because of the comparative inferiority of the Japanese defences and facilities for reconstruction. Forty per cent, of the built-up area of the bombed cities was destroyed ; thirty per cent. of the population lost their homes and possessions ; all the smaller industrial and commercial plants, which formed an important element in Japanese production, were completely wiped out, though some of the larger factories and office buildings survived, as did most of the underground utilities. Important reserve stocks of oil, food- stuffs and textiles were also destroyed, though military reserve sup- plies, which were kept in underground depots, were little affected. By reason of the combined effects of destruction and dispersal, the output of Japan's main arms industries was reduced by the end of hostilities to 20 per cent. of the peak figure of mid-1944.
The Japanese people also were suffering from malnutrition, fatigue, destruction of their houses and difficulties in getting to and from work ; forty per cent. of production hours were lost in July, 1945, from one cause or another. The average reduction of output in plants damaged by air attack was estimated at fifty-four per cent.; that in plants not so affected by twenty-seven per cent. Japanese economy suffered from the cutting off of raw materials, such as oil, bauxite, iron ore, coke, steel and aluminium, on which it so largely depended. Thus the industrial machine was in a sense being destroyed twice over ; once by direct air attack, and again by starva- tion of its sources of supply. An earlier Allied bombing of Japan's extremely vulnerable railways, only just begun when the war ended, would have quickly completed the process and reduced Japan to a collection of isolated communities.
The total of civilian casualties inflicted on Japan by Allied bomb-
ing is estimated at over 800,000, of which 330,000 were fatal ; this total thus considerably exceeds the losses of her armed forces, which were only 700,000. Of these civilian casualties no fewer than 185,o0o occurred in the course of the single disastrously destructive raid on Tokyo on March 9th, 1945, which initiated the air offensive against Japan's cities. Three million buildings were destroyed, many of them demolished by the Japanese themselves to chock the progress of fires. The growing shortage of food, measured by the decline in the ration calory content from 2,000 in peace-time to 1,68o in the summer of 1945, led to a serious rise in the incidence of tuberculosis, ban ben and other malnutritional diseases. All these disasters brought about a severe decline in the morale and will to fight of th-ev Japanese people even before the dropping of the two atomic bombs. Estimates of public opinion are notoriously hard to arrive at with any degree of accuracy, but the Survey Board, from all the evidence at its disposal, asserts that whereas up to the fall of Saipan in June, 1944, only a negligible fraction of the population envisaged the possibility of defeat, the percentage which had lost all hope of victory rose by March, 1945, to nineteen per cent, three months later
to forty-six per cent., and by the end of the war to sixty-eight per cent. Of these the majority had reached the stage when, partly owing to shortages of food and supplies, but mainly to fear of air attack and the shock of successive defeats on land and sea, they felt them- selves personally unable to carry on with the war. Eight and a-half million people had migrated from the cities to the country, where they spread demoralisation and despair far and wide. There was, however, no disorder or revolt and no criticism of or loss of faith in the Emperor, and resistance would no doubt have continued if he had ordered it. But such resistance had in fact lost its purpose, since, though there were still 2,000,000 troops and 9,000 aircraft ready to resist invasion, they could not protect the people against extermination from the air.
The atomic bombs, therefore, were the culminating but not the decisive factor in bringing about the surrender of Japan, which must shortly have become inevitable without them. Resistance had in fact already been prolonged beyond what a firm and dispassionate consideration of the chances of victory and survival would have deemed reasonable because of the fanaticism and lack of sense of realities of the militaristic elements in the Govern- ment. These had a preponderating influence right up to the end, although peace feelers were put out as early as May, 1945, and the Emperor ordered energetic steps to bring an end to the war in mid- June. Even after the dropping of the atomic bombs had made plain the inevitability of surrender, it was only the Emperor's personal intervention which could overrule the resistance of the military and naval die-hards in •his Council, still resolved to fight on.
The experience of the Pacific War supports the findings of the survey in Europe that no nation can long survive the free exploitation of hostile a•ir weapons over its homeland, and enemy planes enjoying full air command can exercise quite as disastrous effects as occupation following on military invasion. By August, 1945, although the Allied air offensive against Japan had not attained its full planned intensity, her industrial potential had been fatally reduced, her civil population had lost its hope of victory and was approaching the limit of its endurance, and her leaders, convinced of the inevitability of defeat, were reconciled to surrender. Indeed, so far from the pre-war claims of the air enthusiasts appearing exaggerated, in the light of what the report calls " hindsight " it appears that the predominant role of air power was underestimated. Although at the beginning of the war the American forces in the Pacific were deficient of land-based planes and carriers, and the machines actually there were of poor quality compared with those of the enemy, the strategic revolution brought about by air power was so fully realised by the American High Command that air superiority was effectively and decisively assured by the end of 1943, and the master key to the ultimate victory was in Allied hands. Yet, in the view of the Board, this coming of air power to full maturity, even with its range and power of destruction enhanced by atomic weapons, will not eliminate the need for ground troops and surface vessels or essentially alter the older basic prin- ciples of war, however much the traditional methods of applying them may need to be modified.
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