Many only remember the two atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and roasted about 200,000 Japanese alive, and many suffered all kinds of injuries, burns and diseases as a result. But this was not the first time that the Japanese were cooked alive by the Americans. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the desserts, the finale of a long campaign to cook Japanese by the Americans.
The Geneva Convention dictated some forms of behaviour for warmongers. Soldiers to fight soldiers, to bomb military bases and war complexes. Leave the civilians alone. The evil Americans will not. They did it in Korea, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, and the worst hit was Japan. They and the Israelis did the same recently, in Gaza. Gaza is not a war. It is a genocide. The carpet bombing of residential areas is not war. The main purpose is to get rid of the Palestinians, dead or alive, to steal their land. Period. And the Japanese cities in 1945 after the American bombings were worst than Gaza, razed to ground zero.
In 1945, in the final phases of WW2, when the American forces were chasing the Japanese Imperial Army back to Japan, Japan was the last battle field. The Americans could easily blow away all the Japanese military installations and war complexes. This was not what the Americans wanted. The Americans were set on exterminating the Japanese people. They wanted to kill as many Japanese as they could. They discarded their standard issued shrapnel bombs.
Two star general Curtis Lemay ordered for incendiary bombs, napalm bombs, for his attack on Japan. He knew that all the buildings in major Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were made of wood, bamboo, and furniture included tatami mats in every home. These wooden homes were idea targets for fire bombs. And these were his main targets in bombing Japan, not military targets. He was out to cook the Japanese people, not fighting the Japanese forces.
Lemay filled his 300 plus B29 bombers with 7 tons of incendiary bombs each. On 9 and 10 March, 1945, he launched his fleet of bombers on Tokyo alone, offloading 1,660 tons of incendiary bombs to turn Tokyo into an inferno of hell. The ground temperature hit 1,800 degree C. Everything melted, including fire engines. Clothing just burnt by itself. Japanese students in schools with swimming pools, jumped in for safety but were cooked alive. The temperature was so high that the pool evaporated. Tokyo alone lost more than 100,000 lives, more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese 'flied lice' everywhere. The cooking was extremely efficient, barely any survivors.
Lemay did not stop at Tokyo. In the following months, March to August, all the major Japanese cities, Kobe, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama....suffered the same fate, all turned to ashes. The casualties were in the millions. The Americans claimed great success, the most complete cooking of millions of Japanese alive. The Americans celebrated while the Japanese paid the price for their war crimes against Asia and SE Asia. In a way, the Americans helped the victims of Japanese invasion and atrocities to avenge their pains and suffering by the Japanese barbarians, returning the Japanese the same medicine.
This part of Japanese history is best kept forgotten, unspoken, unsaid by the Japanese. Did they forget? How could they? The Japanese that died in China were invading aggressors. Those that died in the big Japanese cities were their families, wives, children and loved ones, not directly involved in the war.
Why are the Japanese today still crazily wanting to remilitarise, to become a military power despite the pain and shame of being defeated in WW2? Are the Japanese thinking of repeating the suffering of their people all over again? Japan today can never be the same military power it used to be, vis a vis its neighbours, especially China. Whatever they are thinking, there is no chance of overrunning Korea, Russia or China. Fat hope.
The Japanese may not say it, but deep inside their psychic, America is their number one enemy. Not China. China is only a country that they despised and wanted to conquer and rule. Americans cooked millions of Japanese alive when they did not have to. Japan was already defeated and on the verge of surrendering. They was no need to unleash the incendiary bombs and atomic bombs on the Japanese civilians by the merciless Americans. This is a blood debt that the Japanese will not forget, will not let go and will not let it pass. This is probably the most important reason why Japan die die must remilitarise, to avenge the cooking of millions of Japanese alive, by the Americans. This is also the reason why the Americans will not withdraw from Japan and will keep Japan always under American control. Both sides would not want to talk about. But both sides know that this horrendous and unnecessary killing of Japanese civilians must be faced one day.
