https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvcE9D3mn0Q Im referring to this series.
This was an interesting watch. The primary aim of that propaganda reel obviously wasn't for some sort of military effect (the japanese government had been suing for peace for a while before its release)
This was released in 1944. Up through 1943 the Japanese thought they were
winning. By 1944, they were putting some feelers out for a peace on a
Status Quo Ante Bellum basis, which would have allowed Japan to keep everything they conquered except the Philippines and Wake Island - this was acceptable to nobody, and should have been treated as completely unacceptable.
there's a segment describing the Japanese economy as being based largely on a decentralized cottage industry of household "factories", which is hard not to read as an after-the-fact justification of the firebombing campaigns
That would be an impressive feat indeed, since this was released
before the firebombing campaign started. Operation MATTERHORN, the first actual bombing campaign, started in June 1944. These were daylight raids against "point" targets (by the standards of the time) such as factories and power plants using conventional explosive and armor piercing (which were used to punch through concrete factory roofs) bombs. A second campaign -SAN ANTONIO I- followed in November, targeting the Japanese aircraft industry. The first incendiary attack was not until December 3, 1944, and was a small-scale attack made because the conventional attacks were doing effectively no damage whatsoever. Not only did Japan rely much less on factories than Germany did, the much lighter construction typical of Japanese buildings proved highly resistant to this form of attack.
The first significant firebombing didn't happen until February of 1945, and that was a test run against Tokyo to gauge how effective this strategy would be. Large scale attacks began in March 1945.
The reason that the video calls out Japan's production as relying heavily on decentralized household factories is quite simple -
Japan's WWII-era production genuinely relied heavily on decentralized household factories.
the Philippines (an American colony) are the only occupied territory to get a named procession of ambiguous war crime reels with America as protector and liberator;
The fact that this was the only major US territory that had been captured -and that it was known then that around 15000 captured US and Filipino troops had been murdered by the occupiers- probably had something to do with that.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14981966 times)