[News] State of Fear: How History’s Deadliest Bombing Campaign Created Today’s Crisis in Korea
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Fri Dec 8 10:45:44 EST 2017
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/08/state-of-fear-how-historys-deadliest-bombing-campaign-created-todays-crisis-in-korea/
State of Fear: How History’s Deadliest Bombing Campaign Created
Today’s Crisis in Korea
Ted Nace - Deceber 8, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the world watches with mounting concern the growing tensions and
bellicose rhetoric between the United States and North Korea, one of the
most remarkable aspects of the situation is the absence of any public
acknowledgement of the underlying reason for North Korean fears—or, as
termed by United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, “state of
paranoia”—namely, the horrific firebombing campaign waged by the U.S.
Air Force during the Korean War and the unprecedented death toll that
resulted from that bombing.
Although the full facts will never be known, the available evidence
points toward the conclusion that the firebombing of North Korea’s
cities, towns, and villages produced more civilian deaths
<https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bombing_of_North_Korea_1950-1953#Death_Toll>
than any other bombing campaign in history.
Historian Bruce Cumings describes
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZHtJG9UG7A> the bombing campaign as
“probably one of the worst episodes of unrestrained American violence
against another people, but it’s certainly the one that the fewest
Americans know about.”
The campaign, carried out from 1950 to 1953, killed 2 million North
Koreans, according to General Curtis LeMay, the head of the Strategic
Air Command and the organizer of the firebombing of Tokyo and other
Japanese cities. In 1984, LeMay told the Office of Air Force History
<http://www.newsweek.com/us-forget-korean-war-led-crisis-north-592630>
that the bombing of North Korea had “killed off 20 percent of the
population.”
Other sources cite a somewhat lower number. According to a data set
<http://files.prio.org/ReplicationData/BattleDeathsDataset/PRIO%20Battle%20Deaths%20Dataset%203.0%20Documentation.pdf>
developed by researchers at the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW)
and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), the “best
estimate” of civilian deaths in North Korea is 995,000, with a low
estimate of 645,000 and a high estimate of 1.5 million.
Though half of LeMay’s estimate, the CSCW/PRIO estimate of 995,000
deaths still exceeds the civilian death tolls of any other bombing
campaign, including the Allied firebombing of German cities in World War
II, which claimed as estimated 400,000 to 600,000 lives; the firebombing
and nuclear bombing of Japanese cities, which caused an estimated
330,000
<https://archive.org/stream/effectsofbombing00unit#page/n4/mode/1up> to
900,000
<https://archive.org/stream/effectsofstrateg00unit#page/n3/mode/2up>
deaths; and the bombing of Indochina
<https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bombing_of_North_Korea_1950-1953#Death_Toll>
from 1964 to 1973, which caused an estimated 121,000 to 361,000 deaths
overall during Operation Rolling Thunder
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder>, Operation
Linebacker <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker>, and
Operation Linebacker II
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II> (Vietnam);
Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu> (Cambodia), and Operation
Barrel Roll <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll> (Laos).
The heavy death toll from the bombing of North Korea is especially
notable in view of the relatively modest population of the country: just
9.7 million people in 1950. By comparison, there were 65 million people
in Germany and 72 million people in Japan at the end of World War II.
The attacks by the U.S. Air Force against North Korea used the
firebombing tactics that had been developed in the World War II bombing
of Europe and Japan: explosives to break up buildings, napalm, and other
incendiaries to ignite massive fires, and strafing to prevent
fire-fighting crews from extinguishing the blazes.
The use of these tactics was not a foregone conclusion. According to
United States policies in effect at the onset of the Korean War,
firebombing directed at civilian populations was forbidden. A year
earlier, in 1949, a series of U.S. Navy admirals had condemned
<http://apjjf.org/2014/12/37/Sahr-Conway-Lanz/4180/article.html> such
tactics in testimony before Congressional hearings. During this “Revolt
of the Admirals,” the Navy had taken issue with their Air Force
colleagues, contending that attacks carried out against civilian
populations were counterproductive from a military perspective and
violated global moral norms.
Coming at a time when the Nuremberg tribunals had heightened public
awareness of war crimes, the criticisms of the Navy admirals found a
sympathetic ear in the court of public opinion. Consequently, attacking
civilian populations was forbidden as a matter of U.S. policy at the
beginning of the Korean War. When Air Force General George E.
Stratemeyer requested permission
<http://apjjf.org/2014/12/37/Sahr-Conway-Lanz/4180/article.html> to use
the same firebombing methods on five North Korean cities that “brought
Japan to its knees,” General Douglas MacArthur denied the request,
citing “general policy.”
Five months into the war, with Chinese forces having intervened on the
side of North Korea and UN forces in retreat, General MacArthur changed
his position, agreeing to General Stratemeyer’s request on November 3,
1950, to burn the North Korean city of Kanggye and several other towns:
“Burn it if you so desire. Not only that, Strat, but burn and destroy as
a lesson to any other of those towns that you consider of military value
to the enemy.” The same evening, MacArthur’s chief of staff told
Stratemeyer that the firebombing of Sinuiju had also been approved. In
his diary, Stratemeyer summarized the instructions as follows: “Every
installation, facility, and village in North Korea now becomes a
military and tactical target.” Stratemeyer sent orders to the Fifth Air
Force and Bomber Command to “destroy every means of communications and
every installation, factory, city, and village.”
While the Air Force was blunt in its own internal communications about
the nature of the bombing campaign—including maps showing the exact
percentage of each city that had been incinerated—communications to the
press <http://apjjf.org/2014/12/37/Sahr-Conway-Lanz/4180/article.html>
described the bombing campaign as one directed solely at “enemy troop
concentrations, supply dumps, war plants, and communication lines.”
The orders given to the Fifth Air Force were more clear: “Aircraft under
Fifth Air Force control will destroy all other targets including all
buildings capable of affording shelter.”
Within less than three weeks of the initial assault on Kanggye, ten
cities <http://apjjf.org/2014/12/37/Sahr-Conway-Lanz/4180/article.html>
had been burned, including Ch’osan (85%), Hoeryong (90%), Huich’on
(75%), Kanggye (75%), Kointong (90%), Manp’ochin (95%), Namsi (90%),
Sakchu (75%), Sinuichu (60%), and Uichu (20%).
On November 17, 1950, General MacArthur told
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.2012.711980> U.S.
Ambassador to Korea John J. Muccio, “Unfortunately, this area will be
left a desert.” By “this area” MacArthur meant the entire area between
“our present positions and the border.”
As the Air Force continued burning cities, it kept careful track of the
resulting levels of destruction
<https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bombing_of_North_Korea_1950-1953>:
* Anju – 15%
* Chinnampo (Namp’o)- 80%
* Chongju (Chŏngju) – 60%
* Haeju – 75%
* Hamhung (Hamhŭng) – 80%
* Hungnam (Hŭngnam) – 85%
* Hwangju (Hwangju County) – 97%
* Kanggye – 60% (reduced from previous estimate of 75%)
* Kunu-ri (Kunu-dong)- 100%
*Kyomipo (Songnim) – 80%
* Musan – 5%
* Najin (Rashin) – 5%
* Pyongyang – 75%
* Sariwon (Sariwŏn) – 95%
* Sinanju – 100%
* Sinuiju – 50%
* Songjin (Kimchaek) – 50%
* Sunan (Sunan-guyok) – 90%
* Unggi (Sonbong County) – 5%
* Wonsan (Wŏnsan)- 80%
In May 1951, an international fact-finding team stated, “The members, in
the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not
been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages.”
On June 25, 1951, General O’Donnell, commander of the Far Eastern Air
Force Bomber Command, testified
<https://books.google.com/books?id=XMJpnYmKNQsC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=O%27Donnell+%22just+a+terrible+mess%22&source=bl&ots=MP7xilDwbr&sig=epBj1Z-0AbBJxcE-iLTjYjoTZ_c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQroXSruTXAhWGKGMKHf4BDrcQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=O%27Donnell%20%22just%20a%20terrible%20mess%22&f=false>
in answer to a question from Senator Stennis (“…North Korea has been
virtually destroyed, hasn’t it?):
“Oh, yes; … I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean
Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed. There is
nothing standing worthy of the name … Just before the Chinese came
in we were grounded. There were no more targets in Korea.”
In August 1951, war correspondent Tibor Meray stated
<https://books.google.com/books?id=yKN_q-TqYYgC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=Tibor+Meray+%22collection+of+chimneys%22&source=bl&ots=BhiHf8ePVR&sig=o1-Q1n8Ja-lHf3DNVQFmj1ysLIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCh-3mruTXAhUMwWMKHcCpD3cQ6AEIPzAH#v=onepage&q=Tibor%20Meray%20%22collection%20of%20chimneys%22&f=false>
that he had witnessed “a complete devastation between the Yalu River and
the capital.” He said that there were “no more cities in North Korea.”
He added, “My impression was that I am traveling on the moon because
there was only devastation…. [E]very city was a collection of chimneys.”
Several factors combined to intensify the deadliness of the firebombing
attacks. As had been learned in World War II, incendiary attacks could
devastate cities with incredible speed: the Royal Air Force’s
firebombing attack on
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_W%C3%BCrzburg_in_World_War_II>
Würzburg, Germany, in the closing months of World War II had required
only 20 minutes to envelop the city in a firestorm with temperatures
estimated at 1500–2000°C.
Another factor contributing to the deadliness of attacks was the
severity of North Korea’s winter. In Pyongyang, the average low
temperature in January is 8° Fahrenheit. Since the most severe bombing
took place in November 1950, those who escaped immediate death by fire
were left at risk of death by exposure in the days and months that
followed. Survivors created makeshift shelters in canyons, caves, or
abandoned cellars. In May 1951 a visiting delegation to the bombed city
of Sinuiju from the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)
reported
<http://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/93639/1/07_Taewoo%20Kim.pdf>:
“The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants live in dug-outs made
of earth supported from salvaged timber. Some of these dug-outs have
roofs made of tiles and timber, salvaged from destroyed buildings.
Others are living in cellars that remained after the bombardment and
still others in thatched tents with the frame-work of destroyed
buildings and in huts made of unmortared brick and rubble.”
In Pyongyang, the delegation described a family of five members,
including a three-year-old child and an eight-month-old infant, living
in an underground space measuring two square meters that could only be
entered by crawling through a three-meter tunnel.
A third deadly factor was the extensive use of napalm. Developed at
Harvard University in 1942, the sticky, flammable substance was first
used in War War II. It became a key weapon during the Korean War, in
which 32,557 tons were used, under a logic that historian Bruce Cumings
characterized: “They are savages, so that gives us the right to shower
napalm on innocents.” Long after the war, Cumings described
<http://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/10371/93639/1/07_Taewoo%20Kim.pdf>
an encounter with one aging survivor:
“On a street corner stood a man (I think it was a man or a woman
with broad shoulders) who had a peculiar purple crust on every
visible part of his skin—thick on his hands, thin on his arms, fully
covering his entire head and face. He was bald, he had no ears or
lips, and his eyes, lacking lids, were a grayish white, with no
pupils…. [T]his purplish crust resulted from a drenching with
napalm, after which the untreated victim’s body was left to somehow
cure itself.”
During armistice talks at the conclusion of the fighting, U.S.
commanders had run out of cities and towns to target. In order to place
pressure on the negotiations, they now turned the bombers toward Korea’s
major dams. As reported
<https://books.google.com/books?id=S3SQ1N3R6psC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=%22scooped+clean%22+Korea+bombing&source=bl&ots=K4YtjvZZJR&sig=oVxP8z0zZYUQ2OVocDfpPXNKTgg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwju0LGiiOTXAhUD5mMKHY3PDQIQ6AEIRzAI#v=onepage&q=%22scooped%20clean%22%20Korea%20bombing&f=false>
in New York Times, the flood from the destruction of one dam “scooped
clean” twenty-seven miles of river valley and destroyed thousands of
acres of newly planted rice.
In the wake of the firebombing campaigns against Germany and Japan
during World War II, a Pentagon research group comprising 1,000 members
carried out an exhaustive assessment
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Survey>
known as the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The USSBS released
208 volumes for Europe and 108 volumes for Japan and the Pacific,
including casualty counts, interviews with survivors, and economic
surveys. These industry-by-industry reports were so detailed that
General Motors used the results to successfully sue the U.S. government
for $32 million in damages to its German plants.
After the Korean War, no survey of the bombing was done other than the
Air Force’s own internal maps showing city-by-city destruction. These
maps were kept secret for the next twenty years. By the time the maps
were quietly declassified
<https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bombing_of_North_Korea_1950-1953#Death_Toll>
in 1973, America’s interest in the Korean War had long since faded. Only
in recent years has the full picture begun to emerge in studies by
historians such as Taewoo Kim
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14672715.2012.711980> of the
Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, Conrad Crane
<https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0991-8.html> of the U.S. Military
Academy, and Su-kyoung Hwang
<http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15572.html> of the University of
Pennsylvania.
In North Korea, the memory lives on. According to historian Bruce
Cumings <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZHtJG9UG7A>, “It was the first
thing my guide brought up with me. Cumings writes
<https://books.google.com/books?id=ASa9WCcIHFkC&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=unhindered+machinery+of+incendiary+bombing&source=bl&ots=27AHBZOnQy&sig=YXixFr7SXNDVguQpWQJk0yCcOSk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1_o2YseTXAhVX-GMKHRH_DZsQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=unhindered%20machinery%20of%20incendiary%20bombing&f=false>:
“The unhindered machinery of incendiary bombing was visited on the North
for three years, yielding a wasteland and a surviving mole people who
had learned to love the shelter of caves, mountains, tunnels and
redoubts, a subterranean world that became the basis for reconstructing
a country and a memento for building a fierce hatred through the ranks
of the population.”
To this day, the firebombing of North Korea’s cities, towns, and
villages remains virtually unknown to the general public and
unacknowledged in media discussions of the crisis, despite the obvious
relevance to North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear deterrent. Yet without
knowing and confronting these facts, the American public cannot begin to
comprehend the fear that lies at the heart of North Korean attitudes and
actions.
--
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