Bits and Pieces: US Bombing Strategy in the Pacific during WWII

As a college student taking core classes, I get to write cool papers occasionally that overlap different disciplines. I have some buddies from home who like to hear about these odd papers, so I figured I'd throw up the postscripts for them that I usually write in case anyone else found them interesting.

This one was for my East Asian Civilizations course. I wrote about the impact that Japanese cultural values had on the effectiveness of the American firebombing campaign, the brunt of which ran from February 1945 until the end of the war:

"Any discussion of war inherently involves principles of “right” or “wrong.” Now if the object of war is ultimately a desired peace at the lowest price, who then was in the “wrong” after February 1945?

Should the Japanese have understood that their desired peace was impossible and thus cut their losses when the bombing campaign began, or should the United States have understood that, culturally, prolonged civilian terror bombing was not likely to compel their own desired peace?

Ultimately, I think it would have been foolish to have expected the Japanese to correctly calculate their prospects and capitulate in February or March 1945. To the Japanese, the state either was the self, or was indeed a more valuable entity than the self, and it is irrational to expect any state—especially a state at war no less—to suddenly forgo its centuries old identity in a matter of mere months. The onus, in this scholar’s humble opinion, was thus upon the United States to have considered culture in their strategic planning of the Pacific campaign.

The calculus of American military strategists was based wholly upon values and objects of the Western paradigm, which is as illogical as it is irresponsible. Perhaps the best course would have been, in the Spring of 1945, to have very publicly test detonated a nuclear weapon near an unpopulated area of Japan herself, or simply dropped the bomb on Hiroshima sooner (as grim as that sounds).

Commanders at the time certainly were not afforded the hindsight we have now, but perhaps this would have been just such a way to have had peace at a lower price to all." (A.S Sieff, 11/2008)