Why Did America Firebomb Tokyo?

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Friends —

Everyone knows about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But a few months before the atomic bombs dropped on those cities, there was an even deadlier attack that killed more people in a single night than either nuclear bomb.

On the night of March 9, 1945, American bombers killed a hundred thousand people in Tokyo and destroyed a quarter of the city by fire. General Curtis LeMay had stripped the B-29s of their armor so they could carry more napalm. He sent them in low at night, turning entire neighborhoods into infernos. Then over the following months, they did it again to dozens more Japanese cities. It was the most destructive bombing campaign in human history.

And outside of Japan, almost nobody remembers it.

When you look at the military math, it makes a terrible kind of sense. American planners estimated that invading Japan would cost up to a million American lives and five to ten times that many Japanese. Recent battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa showed that Japanese forces would fight to the last man — and that civilians might kill themselves and their families rather than surrender.

So the choice wasn’t between firebombing and peace. It was between burning cities, slowly starving the country through blockade, or launching an invasion that would be catastrophic for everyone.

My latest video walks through what happened that night, why precision bombing failed, and how the winners literally wrote the rules of warfare afterward. It’s not a justification — just an honest look at how wars for survival actually get fought.

Coming Thursday: Why Is Latin America So Poor?

You can drive from San Diego into Mexico and within minutes cross from one of the wealthiest cities on earth into neighborhoods with dirt roads and open sewers. Household income drops by 80%. Life expectancy drops. Infant mortality doubles.

How is that even possible when they’re right next to each other?

Latin America has great natural resources, productive farmland, and millions of ambitious people. So what happened? I followed the history from Spanish colonization (which operated differently from British colonization) through decades of instability and failed economic experiments to see how the weak rule of law keeps entire economies trapped in poverty.

There aren’t easy fixes or simple villains on this one. Just an honest look at why some places thrive while others don’t.

The video will publish later this week – keep an eye out!

– Ken

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