That was Dresden. The raids were led by the British, who had made a habit of nighttime firebomb raids on cities since the London Blitz. American B-17s did bomb the second day, targeting the rail yards.
Undoubtedly most on this thread believe I am some kind of America hating leftist, but the truth is opposite on both those counts. I care about this country enough to face the fact that our conduct in the battle against Japan will eventually come out, and needs to be faced squarely and delt with in a manner that will do us the least harm.
I assume that our conduct in the Indian wars, where US soldiers have been accused of genocide (watch the movie "Little Big Man" someday), did not come out during the lifetimes of the soldiers who fought in those engagements. But instead the history of those times has been used as a "proof" that America is a brutal country. Our conduct vs. Japan will someday be used the same way, as a weapon to trash the US.
I'm not a PR guy, but I think the best thing we could do is talk about the issue now, while there are a few soldiers still alive who were there, and give them a chance to come clean on what happened. They were kids then. They were taught that the Japanese were fanatical and had been ordered not to surrender, and they were pleased to send the SOBs to hell as they were told the Japanese wanted. It just wasn't true. But very few on our side knew that it wasn't true, who knew there was a better way to win the war where fewer people on both sides would be killed.
Stuff happens. Particularly in war.
What drives me crazy was the reaction to the initial article that mirrors what we thought of the Japanese in 1944. That they were horrible monsters who did horrible things. The only problem is that we were little better to them. And the argument can and will be made that we were considerably worse by firebombing entire cities. The Japanese may have ordered atrocities committed on a handful of innocent civilians as this doctor admitted to. But how is that better from ordering fleets of B-29s to firebomb civilians?
We told ourselves that this was the only way to win the war. We told ourselves that it would cost a million Americans GIs their lives to invade Japan (which could well have killed my father a decade before I was born). But with 20/20 hindsight, was that true?
With the lesson of Guy Gabaldon, could we not have figured out a better way to conduct battle?
Maybe not. At least in 1944/45, with the culture that existed in both countries, we did the best we could. I just hope we wouldn't do the same today.
In any event, when articles such as this one come out, we shouldn't treat it as a time to think of how horrible the Japanese were, with the implication that we were saints. We should treat it as a time to think of how horrible the times were, and be glad that we live in a different era.