Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History

Edited by Marilyn Young and Yuki Tanaka
New Press, 2009

     Bombing Civilians examines a fundamental question in modern warfare: why did military planning in the early 20th century shift its focus from bombing military targets to bombing civilians? The work, co-edited by NYU history professor Marilyn Young and Yuki Tanaka, a research professor at Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University, stretches from the British bombing of Iraq in the early 1920s to the most recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon.
     With contributions from scholars from Japan, the United States, and Europe, Bombing Civilians analyzes in detail the history of indiscriminate bombing, examining the fundamental questions of how this theory justifying mass killing originated and why it was employed as a compelling military strategy for decades, both before and since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among the book’s significant new arguments is historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s claim that it was the Soviet invasion, rather than the atomic bombs, that compelled the Japanese to surrender, ending WWII.