firebombing of Tokyo — Bunk History

An aerial view of a firebombed area in Tokyo in 1945.

When Tokyo Burned

“Paper City” explores the forgotten firebombing of Japan’s capital.

by Spencer Cohen via Foreign Policy on May 29, 2022

An American propaganda leaflet dropped ahead of Curtis LeMay’s firebomb campaign over Japan.

Narrative Napalm

Malcolm Gladwell’s apologia for American butchery.

by Noah Kulwin via The Baffler on May 17, 2021

The nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945.

The Atomic Bombings of Japan Were Based on Lies

On the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan, we should remember that deploying the bomb wasn’t necessary to win the war.

by Taylor C. Noakes via Jacobin on August 9, 2023

Yoko Ono looking pensive.

Yoko Ono’s Art of Defiance

Before she met John Lennon, she was a significant figure in avant-garde circles and had created masterpieces. Did celebrity deprive her of her due as an artist?

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on June 8, 2022

Japanese prime minister and minister of war Hideki Tojo on trial in 1947.

Japan’s Incomplete Reckoning With World War II Crimes

Gary Bass’s new book asks why the tribunal in Tokyo after World War II was so ineffective.

by Aryeh Neier via The New Republic on December 7, 2023

Rubble in the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Big Six v. Little Boy: The Unnecessary Bomb

A new book's insistence that the bomb was necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender is largely contradicted by its own evidence.

by Andrew Cockburn via London Review of Books on November 15, 2023

illustration including "Napalm Girl" photo and photo of the photographer

The View from Here

Fifty years on, Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, “Napalm Girl,” still has the power to shock. But can a picture change the world?

by Errol Morris via Air Mail on June 4, 2022

The First Hague Conference in 1899: A meeting in the Orange Hall of Huis ten Bosch palace – collections of the Imperial War Museums.

Oh, the Humanity

Yale's John Fabian Witt pens a review of Samuel Moyn's new book, Humane.

by John Fabian Witt via Just Security on September 8, 2021

Plane with an eye in it and a bird's silhouette around.

Did Making the Rules of War Better Make the World Worse?

Why efforts to curb the cruelty of military force may have backfired.

by Dexter Filkins via The New Yorker on September 2, 2021

Nuclear weapon mushroom cloud

Mythologizing the Bomb

The beauty of the atomic scientists' calculations hid from them the truly Faustian contract they scratched their names to.

by E. L. Doctorow via The Nation on August 14, 1995

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