Download or read book Inferno written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Madison Books. This book was released on 2000-10-11 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Firebombing of Tokyo written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-06-22 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the firebombing by both Americans and Japanese civilians in Tokyo *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s of the entire Marianas area, declared that if the war is shortened by a single day, the attack will have served its purpose." - The New York Times As American forces pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific from 1942-1944, their island-hopping campaign ultimately made it possible for the Air Force to conduct bombing runs over the Japanese mainland. The first serious air raids came in November 1944, after the Americans had captured the Marianas Islands, and through February 1945, American bombers concentrated on military targets at the fringes of the city, particularly air defenses. However, the air raids of March 1945, and particularly on the night of March 9, were a different story altogether. In what is generally referred to as strategic or area bombing, waves of bombers flew low over Tokyo for over two and a half hours, dropping incendiary bombs with the intention of producing a massive firestorm. The American raids intended to produce fires that would kill soldiers and civilians, as well as the munitions factories and apartment buildings of those who worked in them. 325 B-29s headed toward Tokyo, and nearly 300 of them dropped bombs on it, destroying more than 267,000 buildings and killing more than 83,000 people, making it the deadliest day of the war. The firebombing that night and morning left 25% of Tokyo charred, with the damage spread out over 20 miles of the metropolis. In fact, the damage was so extensive that casualty counts range by over 100,000. Additional raids, this time largely on the north and west, came in April, and in May, raids hit Ginza and the south. Altogether, American bombers flew more than 4,000 missions over Tokyo before surrender. The damage was spread widely, but it was worst in the low city, where some neighborhoods were virtually depopulated as survivors fled to the relative safety of the countryside. Honjo and Fukagawa each lost roughly 95% of their pre-raid populations. In 1940, Tokyo was a city of perhaps 6.8 million, but two years after the end of the war, when the population had already begun to increase again, it was still no more than 4.1 million. As with dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo has remained controversial since the end of World War II. Japan had wisely spread out its industrial facilities across Tokyo so that one concerted attack could not deal a severe blow to its military capabilities. However, by spreading everything out, as the Germans had also done, Allied planes hit targets in residential zones, greatly increasing the casualties. Thus, by destroying as much of Tokyo's wartime manufacturing as possible, the American air force also destroyed half the city. Of course, it's far easier with the advantage of hindsight for people to call the campaign disproportionate, especially since the bombing campaign came at a time when the United States still faced the dreadful prospect of invading Japan's mainland. In 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo took responsibility for Japan's refusal to surrender when defeat was inevitable, thus placing the blame for the firebombing on Japan itself. Shinzo announced that Japan would financially compensate survivors and bereaved family members of those killed, and shortly after the announcement, 112 survivors filed a lawsuit seeking damages for damage done during the campaign. The Firebombing of Tokyo: The History of the U.S. Air Force's Most Controversial Bombing Campaign of World War II chronicles the background of the campaign, its destruction, and its notorious legacy. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the firebombing of Tokyo like never before, in no time at all.

Download or read book The Firebombing of Tokyo written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the firebombing by both Americans and Japanese civilians in Tokyo *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s of the entire Marianas area, declared that if the war is shortened by a single day, the attack will have served its purpose." - The New York Times As American forces pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific from 1942-1944, their island-hopping campaign ultimately made it possible for the Air Force to conduct bombing runs over the Japanese mainland. The first serious air raids came in November 1944, after the Americans had captured the Marianas Islands, and through February 1945, American bombers concentrated on military targets at the fringes of the city, particularly air defenses. However, the air raids of March 1945, and particularly on the night of March 9, were a different story altogether. In what is generally referred to as strategic or area bombing, waves of bombers flew low over Tokyo for over two and a half hours, dropping incendiary bombs with the intention of producing a massive firestorm. The American raids intended to produce fires that would kill soldiers and civilians, as well as the munitions factories and apartment buildings of those who worked in them. 325 B-29s headed toward Tokyo, and nearly 300 of them dropped bombs on it, destroying more than 267,000 buildings and killing more than 83,000 people, making it the deadliest day of the war. The firebombing that night and morning left 25% of Tokyo charred, with the damage spread out over 20 miles of the metropolis. In fact, the damage was so extensive that casualty counts range by over 100,000. Additional raids, this time largely on the north and west, came in April, and in May, raids hit Ginza and the south. Altogether, American bombers flew more than 4,000 missions over Tokyo before surrender. The damage was spread widely, but it was worst in the low city, where some neighborhoods were virtually depopulated as survivors fled to the relative safety of the countryside. Honjo and Fukagawa each lost roughly 95% of their pre-raid populations. In 1940, Tokyo was a city of perhaps 6.8 million, but two years after the end of the war, when the population had already begun to increase again, it was still no more than 4.1 million. As with dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo has remained controversial since the end of World War II. Japan had wisely spread out its industrial facilities across Tokyo so that one concerted attack could not deal a severe blow to its military capabilities. However, by spreading everything out, as the Germans had also done, Allied planes hit targets in residential zones, greatly increasing the casualties. Thus, by destroying as much of Tokyo's wartime manufacturing as possible, the American air force also destroyed half the city. Of course, it's far easier with the advantage of hindsight for people to call the campaign disproportionate, especially since the bombing campaign came at a time when the United States still faced the dreadful prospect of invading Japan's mainland. In 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo took responsibility for Japan's refusal to surrender when defeat was inevitable, thus placing the blame for the firebombing on Japan itself. Shinzo announced that Japan would financially compensate survivors and bereaved family members of those killed, and shortly after the announcement, 112 survivors filed a lawsuit seeking damages for damage done during the campaign. The Firebombing of Tokyo: The History of the U.S. Air Force's Most Controversial Bombing Campaign of World War II chronicles the background of the campaign, its destruction, and its notorious legacy. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the firebombing of Tokyo like never before, in no time at all.

Download or read book I Saw Tokyo Burning written by Robert Guillain and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1981 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.

Download or read book Black Snow Curtis LeMay the Firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb written by James M. Scott and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting.…This book is required reading for anyone with even a passing interest in World War II and the Pacific Theater." —Bob Carden, Boston Globe Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: “If we lose the war, we’ll be tried as war criminals.” James M. Scott reconstructs in granular detail that horrific night, and describes the development of the B-29, the capture of the Marianas for use as airfields, and the change in strategy from high-altitude daylight “precision” bombing to low-altitude nighttime incendiary bombing. Most importantly, the raid represented a significant moral shift for America, marking the first time commanders deliberately targeted civilians which helped pave the way for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later. Drawing on first-person interviews with American pilots and bombardiers and Japanese survivors, air force archives, and oral histories never before published in English, Scott delivers a harrowing and gripping account, and his most important and compelling work to date.

Download or read book The Bomber Mafia written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “truly compelling” (Good Morning America) New York Times bestseller that explores how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war—from the creator and host of the podcast Revisionist History. In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.

Download or read book The Columbia Guide to the Cold War written by Michael Kort and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-08 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War was the longest conflict in American history, and the defining event of the second half of the twentieth century. Since its recent and abrupt cessation, we have only begun to measure the effects of the Cold War on American, Soviet, post-Soviet, and international military strategy, economics, domestic policy, and popular culture. The Columbia Guide to the Cold War is the first in a series of guides to American history and culture that will offer a wealth of interpretive information in different formats to students, scholars, and general readers alike. This reference contains narrative essays on key events and issues, and also features an A-to-Z encyclopedia, a concise chronology, and an annotated resource section listing books, articles, films, novels, web sites, and CD-ROMs on Cold War themes.

Download or read book Inferno written by Edwin P. Hoyt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Inferno, Hoyt shows how the United States 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.

Download or read book Whirlwind written by Barrett Tillman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHIRLWIND is the first book to tell the complete, awe-inspiring story of the Allied air war against Japan—the most important strategic bombing campaign inhistory. From the audacious Doolittle raid in 1942 to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, award-winning historian Barrett Tillman recounts the saga from the perspectives of American and British aircrews who flew unprecedented missions overthousands of miles of ocean, as well as of the generalsand admirals who commanded them. Whether describing the experiences of bomber crews based in China or the Marianas, fighter pilotson Iwo Jima, or carrier aviators at sea, Tillman provides vivid details of the lives of the fliers and their support personnel. Whirlwind takes readers into the cockpits and gun turrets of the mighty B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber built up to that time. Tillman dramatically re-creates the sweep of wartime emotions that crews endured on fifteen-hour missions, grappling with the extreme tedium of cramped spaces and with adrenaline spikes in flak-studded skies, knowing that a bailout would put them at the mercy of a merciless enemy or an unforgiving sea. A major character is the controversial and brilliant General Curtis LeMay, who rewrote strategic bombing tactics. His command’s fire-bombing missions incinerated fully half of Tokyo and many other cities, crippling Japan’s industry while still failing to force surrender. Whirlwind examines the immense logistics and construction efforts necessary to support Superfortresses in Asia and the Mariana Islands, as well as the tireless efforts of engineers to build huge air bases from scratch.It also describes the unheralded missions that American bomber crews flew from the Aleutian Islands to Japan’s northernmost Kuril Islands. Never has the Japanese side of the story been so thoroughly examined. If Washington, D.C., represented a “second front” in Army-Navy rivalry, the situation in Tokyo approached a full-contact sport. Tillman’s description of Japan’s willfully inadequate approach to civil defense is eye-opening. Similarly, he examines the mind-set in Tokyo’s war cabinet, which ignored the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, requiring the emperor’s personal intervention to avert a ghastly Allied invasion. Tillman shows how, despite the Allies’ ultimate success, mistakes and shortsighted policies made victory more costly in lives and effort. He faults the lack of a unified command for allowing the Army Air Forces and the Navy to pursue parochial goals at the expense of the larger mission, and he questions the premature commitment of the enormously sophisticated B-29 to the most primitive theater in India and China. Whirlwind is one of the last histories of World War II written with the contribution of men who fought in it.With unexcelled macro- and microperspectives, Whirlwind is destined to become a standard reference on the war, on multiservice operations, and on the human capacity for individual heroism and national folly.

Download or read book A Torch to the Enemy written by Martin Caidin and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1992 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of one of the most dangerous strikes against Japan during World War II describes how on March 9, 1945, 334 American long-range B-29 Superfortresses flew against Tokyo loaded with bombs but with no gunners. Reprint.

Download or read book Mission to Tokyo written by Robert F. Dorr and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Hell Hawks! author Bob Dorr, Mission to Tokyo takes the reader on a World War II strategic bombing mission from an airfield on the western Pacific island of Tinian to Tokyo and back. Told in the veterans' words, Mission to Tokyo is a narrative of every aspect of long range bombing, including pilots and other aircrew, groundcrew, and escort fighters that accompanied the heavy bombers on their perilous mission. Several thousand men on the small Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were trying to take the war to the Empire—Imperial Japan—in B-29 Superfortresses flying at 28,000 feet, but the high-altitude bombing wasn't very accurate. The decision was made to take the planes down to around 8,000 feet, even as low as 5,000 feet. Eliminating the long climb up would save fuel, and allow the aircraft to take heavier bomb loads. The lower altitude would also increase accuracy substantially. The trade-off was the increased danger of anti-aircraft fire. This was deemed worth the risk, and the devastation brought to the industry and population of the capital city was catastrophic. Unfortunately for all involved, the bombing did not bring on the quick surrender some had hoped for. That would take six more months of bombing, culminating in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As with Mission to Berlin (Spring 2011), Mission to Tokyo focuses on a specific mission from spring 1945 and provides a history of the strategic air war against Japan in alternating chapters.

Download or read book Last Mission to Tokyo written by Michel Paradis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative account of the Doolittle Raids of World War II traces the daring Raiders attack on mainland Japan, the fate of the crews who survived the mission, and the international war crimes trials that defined Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.

Download or read book Curtis LeMay written by Warren Kozak and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hero or Villain? THE FIREBOMBING OF TOKYO. Strategic Air Command. John F. Kennedy. Dr. Strangelove. George Wallace. All of these have one man in common—General Curtis LeMay, who remains as unknowable and controversial as he was in life. Until now. Warren Kozak traces the trajectory of America’s most infamous general, from his troubled background and heroic service in Europe to his firebombing of Tokyo, guardianship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the Cold War, frustrated career in government, and short-lived political run. Curtis LeMay’s life spanned an epoch in American military history, from the small U.S. Army Air Corps of the interwar years to the nuclear age. LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay tells the whole story of the innovative pilot and navigator; the courageous general who led his bomber formations from the front, flying the lead bomber; the brilliant strategist; the unflagging patriot; and the founder of modern strategic bombing, who was famous and notorious in turns. In LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay, you’ll learn: How LeMay developed the strategy and techniques that transformed Allied bombing in World War II, radically improving results and saving lives Why he developed the plan of fire-bombing Tokyo Why he expected a war with Russia How he tried to prevent the Bay of Pigs disaster Who really came up with the idea of bombing the North Vietnamese back into “the Stone Age” Why he agreed to be George Wallace’s running mate in the election of 1968—despite loathing Wallace and most of his policies LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay gives an unprecedented glimpse into the might and mind of one of the founding fathers of air power, whose influence, and controversy, continues to this day.

Download or read book The Firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts In the middle of February 1945, the Allies were steadily advancing against the Germans from both east and west, with British and American forces having repulsed the German offensive during the Battle of the Bulge and the Soviet Union's Red Army pushing from the east. Indeed, the war would be over in just a little more than 2 months. Nonetheless, it was during this timeframe that the Allies conducted one of the most notorious attacks of the war: the targeting of Dresden. As a Royal Air Force memo put it before the attack, "Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance.... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front... and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do." In the span of about 48 hours, Dresden was targeted by over 1,200 Allied bombers, which dropped nearly 4,000 tons of explosives on the town. The firestorms caused by this pounding hollowed out 1,600 acres and killed at least tens of thousands in gruesome ways. Ironically, many of the victims in Dresden had fled from the eastern front as the Soviets advanced, understandably worried about what kind of punishment the Soviets would dole out to captured Germans in response to the atrocities committed in Russia during the war. As the RAF memo noted, Dresden was relatively unscathed before the attacks, and the bombing was justified by the Allies based on Dresden being the home of hundreds of factories and a crucial railway. However, the widespread devastation immediately compelled the Nazis to use the attack as propaganda, and it has been condemned in the nearly 70 years since, with arguments still debating whether Dresden should've been attacked in the manner it was, and whether it was a disproportionate bombing. The first serious air raids over mainland Japan came in November 1944, after the Americans had captured the Marianas Islands, and through February 1945, American bombers concentrated on military targets at the fringes of the city, particularly air defenses. However, the air raids of March 1945, and particularly on the night of March 9, were a different story altogether. In what is generally referred to as strategic or area bombing, waves of bombers flew low over Tokyo for over two and a half hours, dropping incendiary bombs with the intention of producing a massive firestorm. The American raids intended to produce fires that would kill soldiers and civilians, as well as the munitions factories and apartment buildings of those who worked in them. 325 B-29s headed toward Tokyo, and nearly 300 of them dropped bombs on it, destroying more than 267,000 buildings and killing more than 83,000 people, making it the deadliest day of the war. The firebombing that night and morning left 25% of Tokyo charred, with the damage spread out over 20 miles of the metropolis. In fact, the damage was so extensive that casualty counts range by over 100,000. As with dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo has remained controversial since the end of World War II. Japan had wisely spread out its industrial facilities across Tokyo so that one concerted attack could not deal a severe blow to its military capabilities. However, by spreading everything out, as the Germans had also done, Allied planes hit targets in residential zones, greatly increasing the casualties.

Download or read book The Night Tokyo Burned written by Hoito Edoin and published by St Martins Press. This book was released on 1989-04-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of March 9, 1945, the U.S. Air Force began its bombing of Japanese cities in an all-out attempt to stop the war in the Pacific. Here is the story of that mission--of the survivors, the victims, and of one man's determination to bring Japan to her knees. Martin's.

Download or read book Napalm written by Robert M. Neer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Napalm, incendiary gel that sticks to skin and burns to the bone, came into the world on Valentine’s Day 1942 at a secret Harvard war research laboratory. On March 9, 1945, it created an inferno that killed over 87,500 people in Tokyo—more than died in the atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It went on to incinerate sixty-four of Japan’s largest cities. The Bomb got the press, but napalm did the work. After World War II, the incendiary held the line against communism in Greece and Korea—Napalm Day led the 1950 counter-attack from Inchon—and fought elsewhere under many flags. Americans generally applauded, until the Vietnam War. Today, napalm lives on as a pariah: a symbol of American cruelty and the misguided use of power, according to anti-war protesters in the 1960s and popular culture from Apocalypse Now to the punk band Napalm Death and British street artist Banksy. Its use by Serbia in 1994 and by the United States in Iraq in 2003 drew condemnation. United Nations delegates judged deployment against concentrations of civilians a war crime in 1980. After thirty-one years, America joined the global consensus, in 2011. Robert Neer has written the first history of napalm, from its inaugural test on the Harvard College soccer field, to a Marine Corps plan to attack Japan with millions of bats armed with tiny napalm time bombs, to the reflections of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a girl who knew firsthand about its power and its morality.