Did the bombing of Japan's cities—culminating in the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—hasten the end of World War II? Edwin Hoyt, World War II scholar and author, argues against the U. S. justification of the bombing. In his new book, Inferno, Hoyt shows how the U. S. bombed without discrimination, hurting Japanese civilians far more than the Japanese military. Hoyt accuses Major General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force leader who helped plan the destruction of Dresden, of committing a war crime through his plan to burn Japan's major cities to the ground. The firebombing raids conducted by LeMay's squadrons caused far more death than the two atomic blasts. Throughout cities built largely from wood, incendiary bombs started raging fires that consumed houses and killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The survivors of the raids recount their stories in Inferno, remembering their terror as they fled to shelter through burning cities, escaping smoke, panicked crowds, and collapsing buildings. Hoyt's descriptions of the widespread death and destruction of Japan depicts a war machine operating without restraint. Inferno offers a provocative look at what may have been America's most brutal policy during the years of World War II.
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Inferno takes a provocative and indeed controversial stand on the firebombing of Japan's cities…. Fast-moving, dramatic, and exciting, Inferno is a must for all those interested in World War II in the Far East. (Charles Whiting )
Inferno takes a provocative and indeed controversial stand on the firebombing of Japan's cities…. Fast-moving, dramatic, and exciting, Inferno is a must for all those interested in World War II in the Far East. (Charles Whiting )
Inferno takes a provocative and indeed controversial stand on the firebombing of Japan's cities…. Fast-moving, dramatic, and exciting, Inferno is a must for all those interested in World War II in the Far East. (Charles Whiting )
About the Author
Edwin P. Hoyt, a former soldier, is a distinguished historian in the field of World War II studies, and the author of Japan's War, The GI's War, and Hitler's War. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Edwin P. Hoyt, a former soldier, is a distinguished historian in the field of World War II studies, and the author of Japan's War, The GI's War, and Hitler's War. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Edwin P. Hoyt, a former soldier, is a distinguished historian in the field of World War II studies, and the author of Japan's War, The GI's War, and Hitler's War. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Misguided and error-ridden,
This review is from: Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, March 9 - August 15, 1945 (Hardcover)
The author is not shy about putting his point of view in the foreground. Hoyt writes in the Forward that two things stand out in the history of World War II as war crimes, the first being the Holocaust, and the second being the firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945. Regrettfully for the Chinese, the killing of over 20 million Chinese civilians by the Japanese did not seem to make this idiosyncratic list, nor the killing of a like number of Soviet citizens by the Wehrmacht.
The reader gets a taste of the historical inaccuracy to come on the first page of the text, when the American aircraft carrier Enterprise is identified as the carrier from which the Dolittle Raid was launched. While the Enterprise was in the task force, it was the Hornet that carried the bombers. And so it goes throughout this 140 page text. Yes, Curtis LeMay served in the Eighth Air Force in Europe, but it was the RAF under Arthur "Bomber" Harris that destroyed Hamburg in 1943 in a series of raids. The Eighth Air Force participated, but only in daylight missions against industrial targets in that doomed city. The Doolittle Raid had as its objective military and industrial targets, and was hardly the "blunderbuss" approach Hoyt claims. Other claims include the time-honored chestnut first devised by the Japanese at the end of the war, that Hirohito desired to end the war and was stymied by his advisors and cabinet. Bix's biography on the Showa emperor should put this claim to rest, but I am sure it will continue to be invoked by those who, like Hoyt, wish to exculpate the Japanese from any responsibility for the war and the horrors they suffered. The one redeeming aspect of this book are the stories of the survivors of the bombing. They stand as a powerful rebuke to the Emperor, and the leaders of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy who launched their country on a militarist adventure in China and the Pacific.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good "There I was.." - Lousy History,
By
This review is from: Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, March 9 - August 15, 1945 (Hardcover)
As a military historian, based on this book, Hoyt is a competent journalist. He is, however, no William Shirer. If this book was exclusively about the oral histories of Japanese people who experienced the terror, hardships, losses, and deprivations of the final bombing campaign of Japan (Mar 1945 to Aug 1945), then it is a good book. However, Hoyt has implied that this is a history and has made some serious charges against the WWII military establishment accusing them of war crimes. This is no trifling matter. It requires much analysis and context to sift through the data to substantiate his claims. Overall any context and analysis is seriously lacking. If you are looking for a real history that covers these events and more, may I recommend Barrett Tillman's "Whirlwind." It has a balanced context, analysis, and confronts in depth the issues that Hoyt skims over or totally ignores.
The first major problem with the book is the prologue and the last chapter. Here, he launches into a tirade about the bombing of Japan being war crimes against the Japanese and that we should be ashamed. That depends on the context and presentation of facts and interpretation, which Hoyt doesn't provide. The fact is that more civilians were killed in Germany during WWII from precision and area bombing than in Japan. Precision bombing was what we were trying to accomplish via the Norden bomb sight in both Europe and the Pacific, but the results took on the appearance of area bombing. Read briefly about the collateral civilian losses in France during the air strikes leading up to D-Day and although we were practicing "precision" bombing, there was horrible, unavoidable fallout in civilian casualties. I suppose that the more salient point is that I am not aware of any German Luftwaffe officer who was tried as a war criminal for the area/fire bombing of Britain during the war. It appears that Hoyt is anachronistically applying his vision of what today's standards should be where they didn't exist 70 years ago. Further, his beef seems to be over Bosnia and Kosovo. His leap of logic escapes me. If you skip the prologue and the last chapter, the book is useful as a journalistic endeavor of telling his interviewees' stories of their experiences. However, tied obtusely to an agenda of villifying those who fought and died 65 years ago in Japan does damage to the book because it presents a case that he neither really makes nor can the evidence support. In Japan's case, were there any real civilians if everyone was mobilized to repel the final invasion? He doesn't address this. Nor does he mention the Japanese atrocities against the downed aviators during this brief period. The presentation is completely unbalanced. The real irony of this book is that the strategic bombing effort succeeded in Japan where it failed in Europe. The bomber barons in Europe were boasting that they could end the European conflict through bombing without the necessity of an invasion of Europe. They were wrong. The strategic (and tactical) bombing effort actually worked in Japan. Oh well..... The book is pricey. You can get Tillman's for less money and it is a much better book. It covers everything that Hoyt covers with the context and analysis.
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Those American wascals!!!!,
By
This review is from: Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, March 9 - August 15, 1945 (Hardcover)
I bought this book expecting to gain a historical perspective of the Air Offensive Japan campaign, which my grandfather participated in as a telephone lineman with the 20th Army Air Force. I was offended by the author's assertion that it was an immoral American war crime, comparable to the Holocaust. WW2 was a state of total war with fully mobilized combatant nation participants. As such, enemy civilians are fair game when the political/military leaders fail to surrender after the application of defensive lethal violence in a just war.
American adults and children were supporting the military effort with scrap metal drives, victory gardens, and bond drives, among other things. Do not think think for one minute the Axis powers, if they had the means to reach our shores with their bombers or had developed a nuke, would have hesitated to use them against our civilian population. Have you forgotten about Pearl Harbor or the Philippines where many American civilians were slaughtered in the course of the aggressive war waged by Imperial Japan? As far as I am concerned, they reaped what they sowed.
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