At sunset on March 9, 1945, Major General Curtis E. LeMay watched the first of more than 300 bombers lift off from Guam’s crushed coral runway for a midnight strike on Tokyo some 1,500 miles to the north. The 38-year-old LeMay, who had endured a hardscrabble childhood as the son of an itinerant worker, understood the incredible stakes of the night’s mission. The burly general had landed his job as the head of the XXI Bomber Command after his predecessor was fired for his inability to destroy Japan’s aircraft factories. In the nearly two months since he had taken over, however, LeMay had suffered the same dismal results. But far more was at risk than just his career. If LeMay’s bombers could not force the Japanese to surrender, hundreds of thousands of troops would have no choice but to storm the beaches of the enemy’s homeland in what promised to be a bloody invasion.
But tonight, LeMay gambled, everything would change. America’s longstanding policy of daylight precision America’s incendiary bombing—designed to minimize civilian casualties—had failed. bombing campaign of Japan began in LeMay determined that to successfully attack the enemy’s home Tokyo on March 9, islands required a radical rethinking of American strategy, one so 1945, and continued unorthodox, perilous, and morally fraught that he refused to tell his across the country. superiors. He would go it alone. LeMay planned to change more than Here Shizuoka burns just his tactics, but also his type of target. Gone was the pinpoint on July 12. focus on the enemy’s industry. Instead, he planned to unleash his bombers armed with napalm incendiaries on downtown Tokyo’s crowded neighborhoods. One of the world’s most congested cities, the capital counted more than 100,000 men, women, and children per square mile, an area LeMay hoped to incinerate by dawn. This was no ordinary mission—and LeMay knew it. This was murder.
“If we lose,” the general confided in an aide, “we’ll be tried as war criminals.”
The mission that March night would prove the single-most destructive raid of World War II—and a significant moral turning point for the United States, where doctrine had long forbidden the intentional killing of civilians. When the sun rose over Tokyo six hours after the first bombs fell, it revealed an apocalyptic wasteland. A firestorm sparked by the bombing
