THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 11, 1995 TAG: 9508110206
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
It has been said that if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, the Japanese would have surrendered in two or three months without the necessity of an invasion.
The Americans had first used long-range B-29 bombers in much the same way that they had used B-17 and B-24 bombers in Europe in the so-called ``precision bombing'' of industrial plants. For various reasons, these raids were not very effective, and bombers were being lost at an alarming rate.
Curtis LeMay reasoned that these losses were as much due to the strain put upon the bombers by the high altitude and the weight of extra crewmen and ammunition as by the attacks of the defending fighter planes. Early in March, he switched to low-level incendiary attacks at night, similar to the attacks that the RAF had mounted against Hamburg and Dresden. The planes' load was considerably lightened because all defensive armament and the crewmen needed to use those weapons were eliminated.
LeMay's first attack on Tokyo on March 9-10 burned about 14 square miles of Tokyo and killed perhaps as many as 300,000 people, about three times as many as the number of people killed directly in the Hiroshima bombing. In the following nights Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya were also bombed with similar results. After this the incendiary raids were halted for a time because LeMay had exhausted his supply of bombs. Although the incendiary raids were later scaled back, about 25 percent of LeMay's forces continued with these attacks.
My point is: If the atomic bombs had not been dropped, and the Japanese had continued to resist for two more months, more civilians would have been killed in the continuing fire raids than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
JOE C. WILBER
Franklin, Aug. 3, 1995 by CNB