DESTROYING
JAPAN
August
6 and 9, 1945, are two dates that were scorched into the world's
memory with a sudden flash and a billowing mushroom cloud, proclaiming
America's coming dominance of the planet with a stamping finality.
The Japanese Imperial Armed Forces had responded to a global embargo
of raw materials against their nation with a strike on US and
European military bases in the Pacific region; and the United
States responded in turn with two blinding atomic catastrophes
against hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.
Those
two attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were but the climax of a
systematic non-nuclear bombardment of the entire Japanese mainland,
a campaign that continued throughout the war. The two atomic bombings
remain in the forefront of human memory simply because they were
the first in the world and, in the minds of mainstream historians,
were the decisive factor in Japan's surrender and the end of the
Pacific conflict. Yet for all the press that Little Boy and Fat
Man receive, they are only the most famous part of a much larger
endeavor by the United States to not only win the war against
Japan, but also to destroy her.
GIFU:
A 'FORGOTTEN HIROSHIMA'
The
bombing of Tokyo may be recalled, even by the more sympathetic
American observer today, as a "necessary evil" intended
to render Japan unable to make war by knocking out industrial
production in her capital city. Unfortunately for untold thousands
of Japanese civilians residing in the countryside hundreds of
kilometers away from Tokyo, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, the US did
not stop there. Dozens of small towns across the country were
burned to cinders by endless squadrons of B-29s for reasons that
had nothing whatsoever to do with Japan's military might. Nearly
sixty years later, these Hiroshimas – blasted into vapor
with concussion bombs and burning petroleum rather than the collision
of atoms – have been forgotten by most Americans.
I
feel a personal obligation to tell this often overlooked story,
because I have lived in one of those towns for the past decade
with my wife and her family. It is a town called Gifu, the capital
of a prefecture of the same name, about forty kilometers north
of Nagoya. With a current population of 400,000, it was known
in 1945 – as it is today – for its apparel businesses
and trout fishing on the Nagara River. Its only tangible connection
to the war effort, besides a factory that manufactured machinery
parts, was the Kakamigahara Air Base 15 kilometers to the east,
home of the Imperial Army's 27th Infantry Regiment.
GIFU TODAY
If
you walk or drive through Gifu's clean, modern streets today –
as I do on a daily basis – you would never get the impression
that this place had once been an ocean of fire. Gifu Station is
now a high-tech, multilevel transportation hub. Ten-story buildings
line the main thoroughfares. The Yanagase shopping district in
the center of downtown bustles with activity just south of the
Nagara River, which flows through the heart of the city. Gifu
Castle sits astride Mount Kinka on the northeast fringes, keeping
watch over its domain.
But
this town looks a lot different to me now that I know more about
its history. Structures north of the river are old and weathered,
while those south are of a completely different architecture and
relatively new. Gifu Castle, despite presenting the appearance
of a preserved relic from old Japan, is but a replica. There is
little here that connects the Gifu of today to the Gifu of old,
because on one hot summer night in 1945, it was all reduced to
ash.
JULY 9,
1945
 It
was July 9, a little after 10 PM. Most Gifu residents were either
preparing for bed or already there. To the east, the Kakamigahara
Air Base was undoubtedly on alert for air attacks, for numerous
cities to the south along the Pacific coast – Nagoya, Toyohashi,
and Hamamatsu – had already taken hits from American bombardiers.
Kakmigahara was probably expecting enemy bombs, but I'm sure the
thousands of people to their west, who more likely were employed
manufacturing dresses and shoes than guns, were not.
The
attack that night came swiftly, and without warning. It also came,
not from over Nagoya and the ocean from the south, but from due
west. The bombers had already laid waste to a smaller town called
Ogaki, and they were now on their way toward Gifu and Kakamigahara.
A web site
dedicated to chronicling the air raid describes what happened
next. One hundred and thirty-one B-29s, grouped in formations
of two or three, passed over the Gifu city center – I stress
that this was before they reached the air base beyond – and
began to unleash their payloads.
INFERNO
It
only took about half-an-hour. 131 aircraft dropped a total of
nine hundred and seven tons of ordnance on Gifu City alone, consisting
first of 2,387 100-lb incendiary bombs to douse the heart of Gifu
with accelerants, followed by 12,221 500-lb concussion bombs.
An area nearly two miles in diameter, in the exact center of town,
was immediately engulfed in a raging inferno.
The
fire burned throughout the night, making quick work of the mostly
wooden buildings and houses. When the last flames died away the
next morning, they left 900 people dead, 1,200 injured, and 100,000
homeless in their wake. 70% of the city proper had simply been
erased. In 1891, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in
Japan occurred in the village of Utsuzumi nearby, toppling almost
every structure in Gifu in thirty seconds. Residents had completely
rebuilt the town over the next fifty years, only to have their
efforts negated in thirty minutes during the air raid that night.
CIVILIAN
STRUCTURES
The
Kakamigahara Air Base had also suffered severe damage in the attack,
losing its runway, barracks, and most of its parked aircraft.
But losses at the air base were minimal compared to the carnage
in Gifu, where the attack against civilians and civilian structures
cannot be explained away as an attempt to stop Japan's ability
to make war. Many local residents have long suspected that there
was an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda at work.
Yozo
Kudoh, chairman of the Tokuyama History Committee in Tokuyama,
Yamaguchi Prefecture, found evidence of this in the summer of
1998. He was one of several researchers nationwide who were searching
for records pertaining to small-town air raids by the US military.
During his research at the National Archives in Washington DC,
he stumbled upon sheaves of composite aerial photographs (called
"litho mosaics") taken during US reconnaissance missions,
depicting overhead views of Japanese towns all over the country.
The litho mosaic of Gifu was found in this pile, marked like the
others with lat/long crosshairs that converged on an intersection
at the very center of downtown.
061062 –
BULLS-EYE
According
to Mr. Kudoh, the US military took pictures of Japanese municipalities
nationwide, painted them with bulls-eyes, and handed them to bomber
pilots. No specific military targets are indicated in any of the
photographs, and recovered field order documents cite only one
or two concrete objectives that could not possibly justify an
across-the-board firestorm.
In
the field orders pertaining to Gifu, all that is mentioned are
the six numbers, "061062." These numbers correspond
to the hash marks on the litho mosaic of Gifu City proper, taken
on December 11, 1944, pointing to a target at the intersection
of what is now Kinkabashi and Tetsumei Street, the geographical
center of town. Mr. Kudoh believes that "the B-29 bombardiers
were instructed to aim for an area within a radius of 4,000 feet
from this target, in the belief that doing so would completely
burn the city flat."
A 'SEA OF
FIRE'
To
Yoshiki Shinozaki, local historian and chairman of the Gifu Peace
Museum Committee, the implications are clear. "The US military's
claim of aiming for military industry was in name only,"
he commented for an article published by the Gifu Shinbun
newspaper on August 4, 1998:
"They
were targeting the civilian population all along. Witnesses described
a 'sea of fire' on the streets south of Kinka Bridge, which matches
a pattern of burning fuel oil: incendiary carpet bombing. It's
obvious that despite the common belief of this attack as being
on specific military targets, it was in fact a more centralized
strategy.
"It's
been 53 years and stories such as this are in danger of being
forgotten. War is not a subject of the past. I want to preserve
the truth, to protect it for the next generation."
Gifu
did not stand alone on the list of towns that America succeeded
in bulldozing off the map; nearly every prefecture in the nation
was the victim of at least one air attack. It should be clear
that the US government perceived Japan as not an enemy military
force to be defeated, but as an evil population to be punished,
incinerated, exterminated. Nine hundred people in Gifu, and thousands
more in other small towns across the nation, had to die because
the United States wanted to make a point: "we are destined
to be the rulers of Asia, not you." Rather than the atomic
holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destruction in Gifu
– and other small towns like it – was the real first step of
a more aggressive America in her march toward global dominance.
Hiroshima, in effect, was merely Gifu perfected.
ALL BUT
FORGOTTEN
This
unsavory episode has been all but forgotten in American history
books, and has slipped from the thoughts of the average History
Channel viewer. But the Gifuites remember. Every July 9, exactly
a month before the Nagasaki bombing memorial ceremony, Gifu residents
gather at shrines across town and hold their own moment of silence,
and think about the night that their city was almost completely
destroyed. They, and I, think about their forced pitiful existence
for over five years afterward, living in crude shanty housing.
Together, we think about the nearby town of Kakamigahara, turned
into a playground for occupying US soldiers. We think about the
unexploded ordnance constantly dug up at construction sites. And
we think about the continuing occupation by US forces in Asia,
including Okinawa, nearly 60 years later.
Hardly
any American today knows anything about Gifu. But Gifu knows much
about America, and about how one night in 1945 Gifu was turned
into a forgotten Hiroshima by a fledgling American empire.
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