Command and Control

killed almost one million Chinese civilians with chemical and biological weapons: The number of Chinese killed by such weapons will never be known. According to the historian Daqing Yang, during the two weeks between Japan’s surrender and the arrival of the first American occupying troops, Japanese officials “systematically destroyed sensitive documents to a degree perhaps unprecedented in history.” Nevertheless, it has been conclusively established that the Japanese attacked Chinese civilians with weapons containing mustard gas, anthrax, plague, typhoid, cholera, and bacterial dysentery. See Daqing Yang, “Documentary Evidence and Studies of Japanese War Crimes: An Interim Assessment,” in Edward Drea, Greg Bradsher, Robert Hanyok, James Lide, Michael Petersen, and Daqing Yang, Researching Japanese War Crime Records: Introductory Essays (Washington D.C.: Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, U.S. National Archives, 2006), pp. 21–56; and Till Bärnighausen, “Data Generated in Japan’s Biowarfare Experiments on Human Victims in China, 1932–1945, and the Ethics of Using Them,” in Jin Bao Nie, Nanyan Guo, Mark Selden, and Arthur Kleinman, eds., Japan’s Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, and Ethics (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 81–106.

killed millions of other civilians: The number of people killed by the Japanese throughout Asia will never be known. Over the years, the estimates of civilian deaths in China alone have ranged from ten to thirty-five million. Although those estimates were made by the Chinese government, they suggest the possible scale of the slaughter. Cited in Wakabayashi, The Nanking Atrocity, pp. 4, 8.

the Army Air Forces tried a new approach: For the decision to abandon precision bombing and firebomb Tokyo, see Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume 5, The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), pp. 608–18; William W. Ralph, “Improvised Destruction: Arnold, LeMay, and the Firebombing of Japan,” War in History, vol. 13, no. 4, (2006), pp. 495–522; and Thomas R. Searle, “‘It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,” Journal of Military History, vol. 66, no. 1 (January 2002), pp. 103–33.

struck Tokyo with two thousand tons of bombs: Cited in Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, p. 615.

killed about one hundred thousand civilians: That number is most likely too low, but the actual figure will never be known. Cited in Ralph, “Improvised Destruction,” p. 495.

left about a million homeless: Cited in Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, p. 617.

“war without mercy”: See John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1987).

About one quarter of Osaka was destroyed by fire: For the proportions of devastation in Japan’s six major industrial cities, see Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, p. 643.

the portion of Toyama still standing: The official Army Air Forces history called the amount of destruction in Toyama “the fantastic figure of 99.5 percent.” Ibid., p. 657.

“an appropriately selected uninhabited area”: Quoted in Kort, Columbia Guide to Hiroshima, p. 200.

“this new means of indiscriminate destruction”: Ibid.

“to make a profound psychological impression”: “Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, Thursday, 31 May 1945” (TOP SECRET/declassified), p. 4; the full document is reproduced in Dennis Merrill, ed., Documentary History of the Truman Presidency, Volume 1; The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1996), pp. 22–38.

“an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale”: “A Peitition to the President of the United States,” July 17, 1945; the full document is reproduced in Merrill, Documentary History of Truman Presidency, p. 219.

“continuous danger of sudden annihilation”: Ibid.

Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb: A number of historians, most notably Gar Alperovitz, have argued that President Truman used the atomic bomb against Japan primarily as a means of intimidating the Soviet Union. I do not find the argument convincing. See Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996).

between “500,000 and 1,000,000 American lives”: Quoted in D. M. Giangreco, “‘A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas’: President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 72, no. 1 (February 2003), p. 107.

American casualties would reach half a million: Ibid., pp. 104–5.

more than one third of the American landing force: The American casualty rate at Okinawa was 35 percent. Cited in Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Penguin, 1999), p. 145.