From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:

The Hague rules were never ratified by the signatories, so they were not
law.

I have explicitly stated:

"There are many who would say that these Rules of Air Warfare are
irrelevant no matter what."

....yet they are still used as an international standard. I stated
early on that these air warfare guidelines were created by
extrapolating the rules of land and sea warfare, documents that have
been ratified.

It is clear to me that such indiscriminant bombardment was expressly
prohibited. In particular, Articles 22, 24 and 25:

http://lawofwar.org/hague_rules_of_air_warfare.htm

It wasn't indiscriminate. The "cottage industry" aspect of Japan's
military machine was well documented, whereby a considerable portion of
their military industrial output began in people's city homes and flowed
to the military factories and plants. That made the entirety of the
city a military target.

Those cities had other purely military targets. The accuracy of aerial
bombardment was not very good in WWII, so legitimate aerial bombardment
directed at a military objective could legitimately involve damage to
nearby areas.

I point out Tokyo firebombing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You respond
with a concern about accuracy not being very good.

Area bombing was, by definition, indiscriminate. Families with young
children were targeted. A popular theory at the time, "thanks" to a
guy named Giulio Douhet, was that if you kill the non-combatants, a
country's will to fight would collapse.

See: The First Rules of Air Warfare, by Major Richard H. Wyman, USAF
http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchr...apr/wyman.html

I found it interesting to see Wyman refer to "German terror bombing
against England". I expect that he'd speak of the "collateral damage"
done at Dresden, etc.


I suspect that these Hague articles formed the basis for LeMay's
post-war words:
--------------
"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose
if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal..."

With the nature of the Japanese military in WWII, they undoubtedly would
have tried and killed most of a losing country's leaders as "war
criminals".

At issue here is the grounds for being tried. In LeMay's case, it is
the willful targeting of non-combatants (women, children, etc).

Japan had already clearly lost the war by the time that the B-29s
reached Japan in 1945, so LeMay would have had no fears of the U.S.
losing the war.

I agree with that point. Now notice that LeMay isn't quoted as saying
that he had no concerns about being tried as a war criminal. Knowing
that he was expecting to win the war, I take his statement as an
expression of conscience.


~ CT