Figure 1.--Japan has created dignified mmemorials at Hiroshin=ma and Nagasaki to honor and rember the Japanese peoole who perished there. It is aoo beautifully done and entirely appropriate. But what is totally absent is any reconitiin of the million of Chinese and other people Japan killed as a result of bombing and other terrible atrocities. Here we see bodies of dead Chongqing (Chungking) citizens lying in piles after some 700 people were killed in a Japanese bombing raid (July 1941).

The Japanese encontered much more difficulties in China than they had anticipated. China is a huge country. And the Nationalist Army put up a substantial defense. With Japanese casualties and costs mounting, the Imperial General Headquarters attempted to break Chinese resistance by ordering the air branches of their navy and army to launch the war's first massive air raids on civilian targets. As the war continued, both the Imperial Jpaanese Navy and Army began a bombing campaign, as far as we know without coordination. The targets were primarily the large cities in Nationalist hands. Some of the hardest hit cities were Wuhan, and Chunking. Nanking and Canton were alo heavily hit (September 1937). The Japanese destroyed the small Chinese Air Force in the first dew months of the War. This left Chinese cities defenselees. Some of these cities, especially Nanking and Canton had large numbers of Europeans and thus elicited many reports of the Japanese bombings which clearly targeted civilians rather than military targets. China did not have major war industries. Thus this was not strategic bombing. It was terror bombing pure and simple. The targets were thus not nonexistent industries, but was from the beginning the Chinese people. The Chinese strategy was to withdraw deeper into the interior where the Japanese Arny had trouble reaching them. This after the eraly victories in coastal areas, it was only the bombers that could reach the Chiunese interior. The Japanese captured Wuhan (October 27, 1938). The KMT retreated to Chongqing (Chungking) which was far into the rugged interior that the Japanese were unable to get to them. Chiang Kai-shek continued to refuse to negotiate until Japan agreed to withdraw to the pre-1937 borders. The Japanese were not about to withdraw. While the Japanese Army could not get to Chungking, their bombers could. Thus air power became an imoportant part of Japanese efforts to conquer China. Japanese raiders not only hit the Kuomintang's newly established provisional capital of Chongqing, but most other major cities in unoccupied China. After the destruction of the Nationlist Air Firce (1937), Chinese cities had little or no air defenses. Chunling (Chongqing 重庆大轰炸) as the Chinese war-time capital was the primary target. The raids occurred (February 1938-August 1943). They contunued for 5 years while China has little or no air defense. Only with the arrival of the American AVG Flying Tigers did the Japanese begin to enconter resistance and experience any number of losses. The Japanese conducted some 268 air raids on Chongqing, dropping 11,500, mostly incendiary bombs. In World War II terms this was not a heavy bombing, but it still wrecked terrible destruction in a city crammed with refugees. The Japanese seemed to have targeted military facilities to the extent that they could be located, but for the nost part simply bombed the cities meaning residential areas, business areas, schools, hospitals and other non-military targets. The Japanese at first believed such bombing would force the Chinese to surrender. It did not. They continued bombing anyway when the Chinese refused to surrender. The bombing only ended when American air power gained air superority over China.

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Created: 9:16 AM 12/21/2020
Last updated: 9:16 AM 12/21/2020