Today, let's talk about Operation Meetinghouse - the overnight firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945. USAAF General Curtis LeMay orchestrated hundreds of B-29 Superfortress bombers to bring thousands of pounds of incendiary bombs to Tokyo. He knew that he was targeting civilians, but believed this campaign of "terror bombing" would push Japan to surrender. It didn't. You know it didn't. The firebombing of Tokyo killed over 100,000 people, more people than the Atomic Bombs in their respective cities. Families burned to death in piles, people boiled to death in cisterns and rivers. It's a harrowing, awful story. Taylor cries. War is stupid.
Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb - by James M. Scott - https://www.amazon.com/Black-Snow-Curtis-Firebombing-Atomic/dp/1324002999
The Brutal Bombing of Tokyo 1945 | The Deadliest Bombing in History - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-iS8ZQjr1c
Unauthorized History of the Pacific War Podcast - The Firebombing of Tokyo - Episode 416 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkWVi5s85lo
Today, let's talk about Operation Meetinghouse - the overnight firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945. USAAF General Curtis LeMay orchestrated hundreds of B-29 Superfortress bombers to bring thousands of pounds of incendiary bombs to Tokyo. He knew that he was targeting civilians, but believed this campaign of "terror bombing" would push Japan to surrender. It didn't. You know it didn't.
The firebombing of Tokyo killed over 100,000 people, more people than the Atomic Bombs in their respective cities. Families burned to death in piles, people boiled to death in cisterns and rivers.
It's a harrowing, awful story. Taylor cries. War is stupid.
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Taylor: It's weird being away from home. It's fun for the element of seeing the family
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA096.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Hello. Hello, Taylor. How are you?
>> Taylor: Good, how are you?
>> Farz: I'm doing well, thank you.
>> Taylor: You're in Dallas?
>> Farz: I'm in Dallas, yeah. I'm going to be here for a little bit, then head back home and get back to normal life. It's interesting, It's. It's fun for the element of seeing the family, but I think there's a certain age where you're so used to your routines and how you do things and the foods you eat and when you eat and what you do and when the quiet time comes and when the busy time, I don't know, it's just. It's weird. It's like getting harder and harder to kind of flick over into being malleable to that, but.
>> Taylor: Yeah, that makes sense. You have your things. You do. Yeah.
Doomed to Fail brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures
Well, I. Help me introduce us real fast. Welcome to Doomed to Fail. We bring you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures. And I am Taylor, joined by Fars in Dallas. And I was just in Texas and Fars made us a wonderful dinner and we hung out in his pool and it was very, very fun. Thank you for having us.
>> Farz: I don't like to brag. I'm a very humble man, but that brisket so good. Was amazing.
>> Taylor: I'm so impressed. I showed. I showed my husband. He was like, first made that and I was like, yeah, it was one.
>> Farz: Of the better ones, man. The secret. So here, what I. What I've done before is I try to rush the process. So I'll wake up at like six o' clock in the morning. And then if I wake up at 6 o' clock in the morning, it's usually ready to serve by eight, but because y' all were coming over earlier, like 2, 2:30, whatever it was, I put it in the night before and that gave me the chance to cook it super low. Like, usually I'll start at like 250. This time I started at 220. And oh my. That was incredible. So anyways, patting myself on the bag.
>> Taylor: You did a great job.
>> Farz: Thank you.
>> Taylor: It was presented lovely. It was great.
>> Farz: We had a good time.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I am only saying because I am devastated by the story I'm going to tell you.
>> Farz: I, like, started crying.
>> Taylor: I started crying when I was writing this. I like, I don't even know. It's very emotional.
>> Farz: So no more Feel good stories.
>> Taylor: No more feel good stories. Thank you for everyone who enjoyed our feel good story, but we're not doing that today.
>> Farz: Sucks.
Lily wonders why people continue to fight each other in war
All right, let's hear it.
>> Taylor: I have been in deep sorrow, but I know that is like. And like, maybe this is stupid, but I just. All there's people are just so deeply flawed to continue to fight each other in war. You know, it's just like, why are we doing this? It makes absolutely no sense. And I know that, like, that's not a profound statement, but it's just like, hard to even like, wrap your head around the stuff that we do to each other for like, literally no reason.
>> Farz: You know, I mean, we do it for a reason. It's just a question whether it is a justifiable reason.
>> Taylor: Exactly. Exactly. And I'll tell you what it is in a second. But I hear all sorts of warning bells from this story that, like, if you terrorize a people, you risk creating terrorists. When you kill your enemy's children, you're killing the possibility of them becoming what you're fighting against, but again, their children. And then also in that vein, like, does the worst that a people are capable of justifying killing the possibility of it expanding. Does that make sense?
>> Farz: It's like the old. Like, if you went back, would you kill Hitler? The baby Hitler?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. So I just don't know. Like, I. Yeah, but like, he symptom of a bigger thing and all that. You know, there's this really silly. It's like Twilight Zone with Katherine Heigl from a long time ago, where she goes back in time specifically to kill baby Hitler. But when she does it, it turns out that the real baby Hitler had been like, kind of sickly. So her, the nursemaid, has switched him for like a presumably Jewish child that was like on the street. And that's the baby that Katherine Heigl killed, but not the real Hitler. And the real Hitler was still out there. And like, that was all had happened. It was just like a time travel silly.
>> Farz: Is this real?
>> Taylor: Well.
>> Farz: I know it's not real. Catherine. How do the. The two don't even overlap in time. Twilight Zone and Catherine. I guess they do one of the.
>> Taylor: Newer ones anyway, it's Lily. But anyway, just I feel. Feel very, very heartbroken.
Operation Meeting House was the firebombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945
And I'm going to talk about the deadliest bombing in history and one of the deadliest days, if not the deadliest day in human history, which is March 10, 1945. Operation Meeting House, the firebombing of Tokyo.
>> Farz: Ah, okay.
>> Taylor: And actually, like, gonna start crying now because I'm so upset about this. This is gonna be. This is gonna be great. I'm just gonna cry the whole time. Over 100,000 people died. About 16 square miles of Tokyo were just gone. I asked Chat GPT to put that into some reference for me. Oh, I just lost it. It's like If Manhattan underneath 110th street was just gone or just gone. Two Santa Monica's, half of San Francisco. Okay, absolutely gone.
>> Farz: Yeah, got it. Now I understand.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So I read the book Black Snow, Curtis LeMay, the firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James M. Scott. And I listened to a couple other, like, YouTube videos that I will share in the notes. But I'll start with some history and the people involved. I'll weave in some of the plane history, like aircraft history and the day and then what happened after.
The Air Force is not its own branch of the US Military
So we are in World War II, obviously, and we're in the Pacific. We're using airplanes in a way that has never been used before. So at this point, there are generals who are saying that war, air warfare is the pinnacle of what humans can do to each other. Because you can do so much destruction and get away or do it so quickly and do it so fast. I'll add to that that like technological warfare and unmanned flight or I feel like our next big things that are going to be unbelievably devastating. But yes, like, at this point, like, you're buying people from the air. You can create so much devastation that you never could before in the history of war. It's brand new right now. The Air Force is not its own branch of the US Military. That's how new it is still. So there it is, the US Army Air Forces, the usaaf, but not a separate branch yet. That will come later. One of the biggest cheerleaders for a separate Air Force is General Hap Arnold, who is the commander of the United US Army Air Forces. And Hap Arnold, the guy who's like, we should have our own Air Force. He learned to fly from the. The Wright brothers. That's how. This is incredible. I know.
>> Farz: So real quick, do you know why we even needed an Air Force? Because now the Navy has a Air Force. I think the second biggest air force in the world outside of the US Air Force is the Nav Air Fleet. But like, if the Marines have or the army has one and the Navy has, like, why do we need a separate one?
>> Taylor: That's such a good question. I don't know. I think it's like they like in this case, it was like, to command the, you know, the planes in a. Strategically. But also like, you're right that the Navy has a huge plane contingent. So I don't know if anyone.
>> Farz: I think that's true. I think Navy. The Navy's the second biggest air fleet outside of the Air Force.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I believe you. Yeah. I don't know.
>> Farz: Interesting. Okay.
>> Taylor: My friend. I have friends who went to the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy, and my friend who went to the Air Force Academy has done like a thousand parachute jumps.
>> Farz: I don't know what it is. Those guys are so cool.
>> Taylor: I just. It's so cool. But you should write that on a T shirt, wear it every day. Like, I don't understand. It's crazy.
>> Farz: I know. It's like uniquely badass and like athletes. Really interesting.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Like, one of my friends was like, yeah, my last job, I used to jump out of helicopter and save people from the water. And I'm like, you did what? I just went computer. I've never done anything so. But no, that's a really good question, I guess. But I've never. Like that.
U.S. bombed Dresden and Tokyo during World War II
So anyway, all this is wildly new. All of this air fair or air. Air fighting is new up until 1945 is obviously contin. We're obviously in the middle of World War II. A few months after Pearl Harbor. We did manage to bomb Tokyo in the Do Little raid, but it was hard because it was hard to get there. It took a long time and there was really nowhere to stop. So for the initial raids on Japan, we would have to stop in. I say we. The U.S. you know, the U.S. would have to stop in China or. Or Russia to get there. So it was. It was not. It was not easy. But once we did things that we talk. We've been talking about like conquering those islands up in Japan, like Iwo Jima and. And Guam. Like, you were closer. So even during the firebombing of Tokyo, it took seven hours them to get there, but they could get there because we had more. We had better planes and we were closer like we were before and we could turn around. So the war in Europe had escalated and ended. So by the time of the fire bombing of Tokyo, the war in Europe is over. It had ended with some insane destructions of German cities. The big one that people think about probably first is Dresden. Yeah, I've been there. It is bleak. It is a gray place. It was raining. But also like, I feel like it was just like bleak because it was gone. And Dresden was the Florence of Germany, you know, it was beautiful there. It had, like, you know, palaces and churches from that were centuries old, and it was gorgeous. And when Dresden was destroyed, a lot of people were just like, can't believe that they did that. Like, it was such a beautiful place. If you look at pictures of Dresden after it was firebombed, it is a graveyard of facades. It is like big stone facades that are empty. So just like empty, empty buildings. But Tokyo is different. It's, like, built differently. So just a side note, so how we are, how they planned firebombing Dresden and Tokyo, they kind of worked on them together. And the idea was they're going to burn differently. So they took us architects who had lived in peace times in Germany and in Japan, and they brought them to the desert in California or Arizona, wherever, and they built cities. So, like, literally from my house right now, I can see a Middle Eastern city over the mountain. So I can see over the mountain there is this white city that is built the way that, like a city is built in Afghanistan. And they practice bombing it all the time. Like, they have, like, raids in there and things. I can always hear them bombing at the base by me. So that's what they did is they built German cities and Japanese cities and bombed them to see what would happen because it would have to be a little bit different because they're built differently.
>> Farz: Was the U.S. the U.S. dude, President, or was that UK?
>> Taylor: I think it was the UK, but we were, like, very, very involved.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: I think it was like a together thing.
>> Farz: Got it.
>> Taylor: We definitely, like, flew from, you know, it was so much easier to get there, to get to Germany from. Especially once you've, like, once you've liberated France, I mean, you're right next door, you know, not that hard. So they built the brick buildings like Dresden. They filmed them with, you know, curtains and furniture like you would have in Germany. And they bombed them to see what would happen for Tokyo to prepare to bomb Japan. They built the wooden homes with straw mats and paper walls, like, that's a traditional Japanese house. And they set them on fire and they bombed them to figure out what would happen. There are people who studied in Tokyo pre war, came back to the us Helped build these cities to practice bombing, and then went back to Tokyo afterwards to help rebuild.
>> Farz: Wow.
>> Taylor: Like, what a life. Like, what was the point of anything? You know what I mean?
>> Farz: Just these pictures of Dresden are like, there's like, nothing like this.
>> Taylor: Yes. Wow. In Tokyo, like Dresden, there's. There's that graveyard of empty, empty Facades, lots of stone, but Tokyo is gone. Yeah.
>> Farz: We were referring to as a picture where it's like, you can see the, like the front side of it's like a top down angled view. So you can see the facade, but it's very clear because you can also look into it beyond the facade and see that it's like just rubble.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, it's nothing. Totally. And like, you know, we saw that in London and like, we see that all over, all over Europe. But the one in Dresden was like, specifically meant just to destroy everything. Didn't matter. Like, there was a lot of bombing. They said, oh, even now, oh, we're going after a manufacturing plant, or like, oh, we're going after this thing, but it happens to be in the middle of a civilian place. You know, whatever.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: But what they're doing is what they did in Dresden was specifically meant to destroy the city. It was called terror bombing. It was meant to mean make the civilian population say, we have had enough and demand that it was over. So there was less pretense of like, oh, yeah, we're heading, we're trying to hit this, I don't know, this engine factory. Like, no, we're going to destroy the city. We're going to kill people. We want them to be hungry, we want them to be afraid. We want them to demand that this is over. So that was like the point of it.
>> Farz: It reminds me a little bit of like Gaza and Israel because, like, it's borderline war crimes.
>> Taylor: Absolutely.
The starving are inflicting pressure on leadership, so they're inflicted on innocent civilians
>> Farz: But they're done to inflict pressure on leadership, so they're inflicted on innocent civilians. So they rise up, basically.
>> Taylor: And the question after this is like, is this gonna, is this a war crime? Like, can you rise up after this? Also because you are starving, people starve. There were, you know, 300,000 orphans. Like, what do you do with that? You know, I don't know.
Avoid a ground invasion of Japan, many more Americans will die, expert says
So now it's 1945, the war in Europe is over and we want to avoid, and this is again, like something we say is you want to invo. Avoid a ground invasion of Japan, many more Americans will die. American parents don't want to send their sons. Like, now we're talking about like the young guys, like my grandpa. I have one grandpa that was older and he was in the Navy and he never went over to Europe, but he was stationed, he was like a, a, a trainer in like the Great Lakes area and he would like train guys to go over. But my dad's dad joined when he was like 15. He joined the youngest he could possibly Join. And he would have gone for sure, you know, but it ended before then. But, like, it was like, now we have boys who were like 9, like Miles, age 8 years old when the war started. And this war has been going on for so long. I'm going to send him. Absolutely not. You know what I mean? So Americans were like, we want this to be over. It will take forever. And we have this idea of the Japanese people that, like, I want to counter a little bit. So I know, like Dan Carlin says, the Japanese are like everyone else, only more so, you know, because they were, like, super intense about this and everything. And they did very terrible things and really believe that, like, God for the emperor and Japan would be successful. And there's people like, you know, that guy who, like, lived in the woods for 30 years because he never thought that they would ever surrender. That exists, you know, people who really thought that. And we've seen things like when we went to. When we, like, invaded Saipan, all the people that jumped over that cliff. Do you remember that story? No. Like, the people of Japan were told the Americans were so brutal, which is what we're told about the Japanese, which is true on both sides, that they will come in and they will kill them and they will rape their children and rape their women and torture and destroy everything. So when they got to Saipan, mothers would take their children and they all jump off the cliffs together, you know. And it was just horrifying for everyone involved. Like, people who watched it happen were like, don't. Don't do that. So all this is happening. We're just, please, like, let this. Let this end. So Hap and his team have a new plane. It is the B29 Super Fortress bomber. It is huge. It can reach Japan from the islands that we just got, like Iwo Jima, etc. It's not like next door, it takes seven hours to fly that, to fly Tokyo and seven hours back. But it's still doable for the B29, which is new, that a plane can do that whole round trip and be able to do it. But it's expensive. So it's a big, expensive plane. It's a huge in. They used it in Germany with. Through success, you know, whatever, because it can fly really high and drop a bomb and then get away. So there's not a lot of, like, chances of, like, losing the plane. Japan has wildly different weather from Europe, so the jet stream at that certain level above Japan is insane. So there is no way to drop a bomb from that high and have it land on your target. It's just too windy and it's also too cloudy. You can't see anything from like December through March in Japan. There's clouds constantly. So there was no way that they were going to be able to do it. They use, for example, 835 B29s dropped over 2,000 tons of bombs on the Nakajima Aircraft Factory. That's near Tokyo. And it was never less than 96% operational. You know, like you just didn't hit it. You just couldn't do it the way they were doing it.
>> Farz: Sounds like me vaguely familiar because I do recall with the reason why Nagasaki wasn't as bad was because of that. Because the jet stream pushed the bomb out of the center where it was supposed to be, where it was supposed to land.
>> Taylor: And Nagasaki was even the second choice that day because they couldn't see the first choice, you know.
>> Farz: Yep, yep.
>> Taylor: So it's like, what a f****** fate, you know, Just like the clouds can't. We can't do it.
>> Farz: Yep.
>> Taylor: but. So the B29 Super Fortress, huge plane, typically had a crew of 11 men. There was the aircraft commander, who's a pilot, a co pilot, a bombardier, navigator, engineer, radio operator, radar operator, left gunner, right gunner, top gunner and tail gunner. So it could also shoot.
>> Farz: I know I'm looking at a picture. It's crazy. It's like a little window, like above the vertical stabilizer with gun turrets coming out the back of it.
>> Taylor: Nope. Like, so scary.
>> Farz: So scary.
>> Taylor: But for the Tokyo fire bombing, they will get rid of the gunner position. So typically they'll have about eight or nine people instead of 11 because they want to fit more bombs because there's no plan to like, shoot from the plane.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: So that will happen later. But classically. But 11 people on. On a B29. So we have these new planes. The war in Europe is over, technically, and something needs to happen in Japan. The general in command of the B29 fleet, which is the 21st bomber command of the Pacific, is Brigadier General Heywood Hansell. And he was a big part of the precision bombing in Germany. And he had bombed Tokyo in November, but it was not a huge success. He hadn't really hit what he wanted to hit. And in January 1945, he gets relieved of duty and the job goes to our main character, Major General Curtis E. LeMay. So he's the guy who is in charge of the. Of this whole. This whole thing.
>> Farz: It seems really familiar.
Curtis LeMay ran for vice president in 1968 as an independent
>> Taylor: Yeah. So Curtis LeMay is like just a very He. He does a lot. Let me tell you. Let me just tell you. He was born November 15, 1906. He would live to be 80. He died in 1990. He was born in Ohio. He came from a super poor family where his dad would just, like, go from job to job and. And they never really were stable. He worked through high school. He worked at a steel mill to pay his way through college. He went to Ohio State and he joined the Air corps reserves in 1929, where he learned to fly. He was short and kind of chubby. He married a woman named Helen Maitland on June 9, 1934. A cute story is that they went on a double blind date and Helen and her girlfriend, like, looked out the window and they saw the guys coming toward them and Helen said, I'll take the fat one. And they got married.
>> Farz: What's a double blind date mean?
>> Taylor: It means, like, both people don't know who the person's with. So you want to date with, like, two people, but you like kind of picking who you want to be on the date with.
>> Farz: Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: It's not like you're already with Rachel. I'm a date with Juan. It's like the four of you are going on a date and you, like, figure out who you like.
>> Farz: Got it. Got it.
>> Taylor: You know? So anyway, she picked the fat one. They got married. They had. They had one kid. Yeah. But lemay is a brutal guy. He just wanted to get it done. And he would, like in Europe, when he was commanding forces in Europe and people, he'd be like, you have to do this. Like, if you chicken out, you're gonna be court martialed. Like, everyone has to do what I tell them to do. Like, very, very strict. He had some hilarious Nick. They are old Iron Pants, Iron A**, the demon bombs away, LeMay and the big Cigar. Because he's often seen with a cigar after this when the COVID of Time magazine. Well, actually it's because he had Bell's palsy and half his face wasn't working. So he got Bell's palsy, which is like a disease, and it makes your face kind of droop. And he got it. And the doctor was like, well, we can, like do X, Y and Z, but it might not work. And he was like, forget I work to do. So he would often have a cigar in his mouth just to kind of like make that droop less visible.
>> Farz: That's part.
>> Taylor: So later, after. After World War II is over, he's going to be part of tactics in the Cold War. He's really, really against the Vietnam War. And he joins George Wallace and for the presidential campaign. And he runs for vice president in 1968 with the American Independent Party. They received. He wasn't very. A very good politician, and George Wallace didn't like him. And George Wallace, who was very famously, like, very racist, it was not going to win. But they received 13.5% of the popular vote, and they carried five states, which is a lot.
>> Farz: I mean, Peru got 13. Like, there was a time when independent movements actually also innocently. I think it's hilarious how out of shape we've become that we call this a fat man. Like, this guy would be like an athlete in today's America.
>> Taylor: He has his little jowlie. But we are. Who isn't? He can't talk. So later, he's actually going to get an award from Japan about how he, like, helped stuff afterwards called the Order of the Rising sun, which reminded me so much of, like, remember after the Indianapolis was shot down, like, a year later, they have the captain of the submarine on trial. You're like, guys, now we're just talking to each other, you know, even like, JFK talking to f******. What's his face and being like, you killed my brother, but can you please build me a rocket to the moon?
>> Farz: No, dude. They had the captain of the submarine testify against McVeigh. That's what it was.
>> Taylor: They were like.
>> Farz: They brought him in to, like, indict on American soil the American cat. It's crazy wild.
>> Taylor: Like, what. What's happening? We should all just, like, have a meal and calm down.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: But anyway, so that's about that. That's LeMay. That's his life. The point I want to make, but the fact that, like, he was brutal and, like, wanted this done, is that he knew what he was doing. He knew everything that would happen. He knew the people who would die, the types of people who would die. And he did it without remorse, just to say that, like, he knew what was going to happen and he did it on purpose and he did it for his reasons, which were to, you know, stop the ground invasion, stop all these things. But he. He was under no pretenses that, like, what he was doing was, like, trying to strategically hit factories or whatever. He was going to destroy Tokyo.
>> Farz: We can't say he did it without remorse. We don't know what the guy was going through.
Japan was preparing for an atomic bomb, but they weren't expecting one
Like, it reminds me of when Oppenheimer goes to Truman and was like, I. I. Blood on my hands. And he's like, you didn't tell him to drop the d*** bomb. I did. It's all like, you know, like, it's like. It's like you're stuck between a rock and. I mean, I'm not saying you did. I'm just saying, like, I don't know what he was going through.
>> Taylor: I know, but I, the, the, the stuff that I read is he was very much like. He didn't. He never, like, felt bad about it. He never said either. But you're right, maybe he didn't. That's hurt. I don't know.
>> Farz: Men have a hard time sharing their feelings, especially on.
>> Taylor: Especially in that time. Yes, exactly. And just to note, I do. I did have a note that he did not sleep that night, which he usually sleeps through bombing campaigns, but that was the one night he didn't sleep. So at least there's that. You're right. You're right. So he has very, very little time to prove himself. It is January. They are going to fire bomb Tokyo in the beginning of March. So he's like, we have to do this and we have to do it now. The press, the precision bombing isn't working, and we haven't technically tried to kill civilians yet. We've been like, doing that thing like, oh, we're trying to hit factories or whatever. And it's not like people didn't know that it might happen because Japan was preparing for it. And so, like they did in the uk, like they sent all the kids from London to the country, you know, like, they were doing that all over the world. They were sending children from major cities into the country to try to save them. They were doing that in Japan. They were sending kids from Tokyo just out into the country, hopefully hoping that, like, they would be okay. They knew they would be bombed in some way or another. In Tokyo itself, they, the Japanese pulled down like 300, 000 buildings to create fire breaks. We've talked about a bunch in, like, talking about fires, talking about, like, other wars, like, I think I told you this, but when I went to the, the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima, like a lot of the children that died, what they were doing instead of going to school is they were helping pull down buildings because they were trying to create fire breaks because they knew that this could happen. This. They were expecting something like the firebombing of Tokyo. They weren't expecting an atomic bomb, but they're expecting something and they're trying to create fire breaks. Additionally, in 1923, there was a huge earthquake in Japan and so much was destroyed. So a lot of stuff that Was built, was relatively new and quickly built anyway because a lot of it had been destroyed some in the last 20 years.
>> Farz: Yeah, it could be pulled down easily.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah. So also they had people digging holes in their homes as like a little shelter. They would do things like sleep with their clothes next to them, obviously, like just to be able to get up and, and leave and go into like a school or someplace underground like as quickly as possible. Kids had these hoods that their moms would make them out of like old kimonos and such that you would put over your head so you could breathe. Kind of like just like a mask to be able to try to breathe through the smoke. So kids would, the children who remember it, they. That's what they remember. They remember waking up and like putting on their clothes really fast and putting on their hood and like running.
LeMay is 38 when he's planning the attack on Tokyo
so lemay has an idea. He says let's instead of flying super high, Even though the B29s can do this, let's fly low. So we can't. So we can like cover more space and like get more stuff. So he does some tests with his pilots and has them fly at like 50ft. Because like if you can fly a B29 at 50ft, you could do anything, you know. So like they were coming in different places. So now it's time to do something. And there are other cities that they're going to hit also after this. And I'll tell you more a little bit about them, but Tokyo is the big one. Another thing that, like, I keep thinking that I don't know as I get older. LeMay is 38 when he's doing this and Emperor Hirohito is only 43. So like, what is the right age to be able to make these decisions? I feel like as I get older, I'm like, there is no right age. Like, what is it? I don't know.
>> Farz: Yeah, 38 seems again, I think a little hardier back then.
>> Taylor: Like, yeah, it's different after you've like been through Europe.
>> Farz: A 38 year old then is like probably like a 60 year old. I don't know.
>> Taylor: I'm sure he like looked old, you know what I mean?
>> Farz: Of course, of course.
>> Taylor: You know what I mean? I don't even looks like that. So it is March and we are going to firebomb Tokyo. And what I mean is, over 300B29, they're going to fly the seven hours to Tokyo at night and at different altitudes and they can't see each other. So it's like being in the B29 itself is wild. You're there for seven hours, it's loud as s***, it's cold, and there's 299 other planes out with you, and you're all at varying levels of altitude and you can't see each other. So they just, like, went. They only lost about 20 B29s in the whole raid, which is remarkable because they were, like, losing them fast. They sent one journalist on in all of the 300 B29s, and he was a person who, just as an aside, had survived the Coconut Grove nightclub fire and his wife had died. So that was, like, one of the biggest. It was in Boston, one of the biggest fires in U.S. history where, like, hundreds of people died in a nightclub. And he was saved by, like, a man pulled him out of the rubble. And then when he was in the Pacific getting ready to just, like, taking pictures, being a journalist, a man came up to him and said, I'm the one who pulled you out of the rubble in Boston. Not wild.
>> Farz: Yeah. There's just nobody around. Like.
>> Taylor: Four people.
>> Farz: There's like, 20 people in the whole country.
>> Taylor: And he. So he was like. He had big. I don't give a vibes. Because he was like, I've been through. I'll go on one of these B29. So he did go at that. But again, there is limited crew, so there's no. No gunners. They can carry more bombs. And they're bopping, they're drumming. They're dropping incendiary napalm bombs. Bombs. Napalm bombs. It's hard for me to say, which means they fall out of the sky and they explode. And, like, arrows of napalm, which is sticky fire.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And it will stick to the houses and burn. It is white hot. It is a thousand degrees when it hits the house. There's no chance of it, not just destroying everything.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: They set off on March 9th. It is very. Also very dry, obviously, like we've talked about in, like, many fires. Like, that's a big part of it. It's very dry. And the city's been, like, ready to. Ready to burn. The first bombs hit shortly after midnight in the Shiramashi district. It took seven minutes for the sirens start going off so people could, like, hear it and smell it. But the sirens didn't go off in the whole city for seven minutes. And it's also just really, really cold. Like, it's. It's winter. There's some snow on the ground. There is. People remember, like, you know, they would Wake up in the morning, I have to like, break the ice on their water buckets. Like, it was really cold. When. That will help later preserve the bodies. And like other times, like when the atomic bombs go off, it's August and, you know, bodies are bloating and exploding and it's just that. That is on top of it. But this time it's going to be easier to identify bodies, even though it's hard because they're frozen in some cases.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Just like a small. A small mercy of all this. Terrible, terrible things about to happen. Most of the people in Tokyo are women and children and people who cannot go to war because most of the men are gone. They have died. They are out doing things like they. They're out. The newspapers continuously said that Japan was winning. Obviously, like, that was.
I've always questioned the wisdom of doing the Pearl harbor attack
The propaganda was like, everything's fine. We're super close. On the street, people would whisper to each other, I don't think we're winning. But you're allowed to say that. You know, you can't say that you're going to go to jail. You can't. You can't talk about it. So they know something's going. They know something's coming. They're kind of prepared for anything, but they're not prepared for this. There's Japanese gunners that will try to drop some of the B29s. I mean, it's hardly any that they get real quick.
>> Farz: Sorry. As an aside, did Hirohito. Do we know if he actually thought that he could win? I've always questioned the wisdom of doing the Pearl harbor attack, like a direct attack attack on the U.S. it's. It's really unwise. It's like me going up to like the biggest dude I can find and being like, you know what? I'm just gonna hit you in the face. I think maybe I'm gonna beat you later. Like, I was the logic.
>> Taylor: I know. I wonder and I think there's like a little bit of like the imperial romantic to take over the world. And I also feel like there's a probably, and this is just me making this up, but probably a feeling that you get when your land is so, like it's an island, it's not any bigger. You know, there's not a lot of place them to go, so they have to like, go hard into other places where there's like a lot more space. And then I also think that he's surrounded by people who are literally telling him that he's from God. Whether or not they believe it or not. You know, but there's idea that they're like destined, chosen people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't. I don't know. And like I've talked about this before. Like I don't know what the f*** if that would happen if the Nazis had won, because the Nazis aren't gonna let them live that white, you know.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Like, did you see that? Would you see or read the man in the High Castle?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: So it was the Philip K. D*** story. And I wish it was a little bit. It was a little bit like fantastical. And I wish it hadn't been as fantastical because I liked the actual history of it. But the idea was like, if, if we had lost, what would. What it would look like? And in it they separate the United States by the Rocky Mountains. And so the west is owned by Japan and East is owned by Germany. It's like super interesting how like they're trying to figure it out. Then there's magic and you're like, eh. But you know, like what. What would have happened eventually?
>> Farz: Where would they have put me?
>> Taylor: You? I don't know. Good question. They probably would have killed you.
>> Farz: Oh no.
>> Taylor: Oh no.
B29s dropped 10 tons of bombs every minute for two hours
So, okay, so the B29s dropped 10 tons of bombs every minute for two hours, non stop. Just drop bombs, absolute constant. People were trapped in the burning city. They did it in a way that they kind of bombed out. And then the burned in and there was no way out. People were. People ran. With their children tied to their backs, they ran. Children survived under piles of dead bodies. People were burned. They died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their little holes that they had dug in their house. They jumped into pools and bathtubs and water cisterns and they were boiled alive. Parents would pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning and wake up just surrounded by their dead children. All of the children gone. People were drowned in rivers, under masses of bodies because people are trying to run to the river because they're burning and the river is hot and they are boiling and they are drowning. And people, they would find piles of people burned in a pile and be like, how are these people burned in a pile? Because they were in a building trying to shield each other and the building burned down and the building is gone, but the pile of people is still there. The shelters they dug were worthless. People saw babies that were just born, still attached to their mothers, dead, like people going into labor. It's called. The book I read is called like Black Snow because then it's just like ash falling. People are dying. The Fire is coming through in tunnels 70 miles per hour. Just like if you're, if you're not, if you survive, you're very badly burned. You're like, you're. Nothing is good. Everything, everything is, is, is gone. They knew something was going to happen, but they didn't expect it to be like this because up until this we've done like the really poorly precise precision bombing.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So it was like maybe we'll be bombed once or twice but not like a constant two hour attack of napalm. Constant, you know.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: They couldn't have expected that.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: They just didn't. That's why I wrote LeMay did have trouble sleeping that night, but just that night he's like a baby. A couple people who were there like that just wanted to point out there is a photographer named Ichikawa Koji. He was, he survived. He like, at some point he passed out, he lost his car. He was like running through the fire. But he did take pictures of it. So you can see his photos and I'll share some of them. Just of like piles of dead bodies of destruction, all these things. So he was, he was there to document it. And then in general, the Americans like they, a lot of them were haunted by this. You know, they could smell burning people from their airplane. You could see the burning for up to 200 miles. And then what? They're supposed to come home and like be door to door vacuum salesman and good fathers, you know, like I don't know how you, I don't know what you're supposed to do after that.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's got to be traumatic.
>> Taylor: I know that did this other things that they did. It was part of a wider bombing campaign. So after this they hit Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and then Nagoya again. So it was five raids over nine days. They incinerated 32 square miles of Japan's four largest cities. So again like Japan, Tokyo itself was like 16 square miles, which is like most of Manhattan or all of Santa Monica if you're a California. After San Francisco in that week they killed 150,000 plus people with like very few American, American losses. At one time they paused because they ran out of napalm and then they did it again. They just were like we have just used all of our thing, just everything is on fire. Yokohama for example was 58% burned. And then now you have millions of refugees, people who would like walk or try to take trains to the country where they were like, it was hard for them to find resources like. And before this, even before this they were starving, you know, like, they would be like, don't think about rice, because they didn't have any rice, you know, like, they were, you know, very. There was nothing to eat in. In most of Japan. So besides, those people are starving, and then all these, like, refugees come to the country where they're like, we're all starving, too. You know, There were, you know, hundreds of thousands of people were. Were wounded. There were hundreds of thousands of orphans. You know, like, if you're three years old and your whole family dies, what happens to you? You know, like, either someone has to take you. And there's stories of, like, the. Of children, like, having to go to, like, their aunts and uncles, their aunts and uncles being like, we hate you for this. You're taking our food. You know, like, we wish you had died, too, because it would have been easier, you know, like, everyone is just like, it's terrible. And then they thought, like, American. Americans celebrated. They didn't. They didn't want to send their kids over. They didn't want to know, honestly, the devastation. They didn't have many pictures of exactly what had happened, but they were like, this has to be it. They have to give up now. You know, like, after this. After this raid. But as you know, they didn't, you know, and it took the two atomic bombs to make them finally. Finally surrender. And I just, like, I can't believe Japan still exists after all of this. I can't believe how. How many buildings are in Tokyo and how beautiful it is, and that there are trees, you know, like, that there are trees in Tokyo. I think it's a miracle. And it's just, like, so wild that. That it's still. That it's still there. And then I think afterwards, you know, they went in and we tried to fix it and all of that, but I think it's a real miracle that, like, the Japanese aren't trying to start a war with us now in retaliation. You know what I mean? Like, that we didn't.
Everything I hear about World War II is about indiscriminate bombing of civilians
I took a freaking cooking class in Tokyo with a German family, an Austrian family, me and Juan, and, like, a Japanese woman, you know, like, that just. And it's. It's been like, 80 years.
>> Farz: I am. I have a really, like. I'm really bad at understanding the scale of things, and I've never been to Japan, but I look at the map, it looks so tiny. And I'm like, Everything I hear about World War II, I'm like, was there, like, anything left? Like, was, like, any. It seems so small.
>> Taylor: It is Such a miracle that there's anything left, you know? And, like, the cities that were like. Like we just said before, like, oh, we can't see this. We can't see Osaka today. So we're gonna hit Hiroshima or hit Nagasaki, you know what I mean? Like, that is such a crazy decision to make in the air, you know?
>> Farz: Is LeMay the one who had a honeymoon in Kyoto and said, we can't drop the bombs there?
>> Taylor: He's not, but I do know that there is one that has that. Yeah, I don't think he's the one who said that, but there is someone who did that. You know, it's too beautiful to destroy. You know, you're like, what the h***? You guys. Like, it's just, you know. And then obviously, like, a big part of the lesson that, like, I learned, that devastating museum in Hiroshima is like, this is just indiscriminate bombing of civilians. You're just killing people, you know? But, like, more people would have died. More people would continue to dive, would keep going. And I understand that. And we couldn't have let the Nazis get the atomic bomb and all these things. But, like, man dying that way is just so unfair, you know, like, for anyone.
>> Farz: I mean. Yeah.
>> Taylor: So there is, like. Like you were saying, like, there's a. That's the. That's the debate afterwards. Like, is this a war crime? Is it not? Like, what do you. What do you do afterwards?
>> Farz: It was a guy named Henry Simpson, U.S. secretary of War during World War II. Yep.
>> Taylor: Mm. It totally makes sense. So, yeah, that's it. It's such a f******. So terrible. I'm so. Just. All of the stories that were in the book that I read are so just children remembering, you know, your parents screaming and grabbing you and trying to hide you and getting on top of you and waking up. And there's, like, bodies that are. There's pictures where the child has fallen off the parent's body, and the only part of the parent that isn't burned is the part where the child was on because the child was burned on top of them. You know, like, just stuff like that. And then the cleanup was insane. They had to. They buried a lot of people, and then later they dug them all up and burned them together. Like, a lot of the bodies. And so they're in big urns in Tokyo in a museum right now with urns of people who died in the 1923 earthquake. So just like, even that had, like, that devastation had happened then. This devastation had happened, and it was just like, so many People.
The New York Times interviewed some of some men from Japan about WWII
And so I happened to shoot this to end. The New York Times interviewed some of some men from Japan. The youngest men in the Japanese military are still alive. They're in. They're like 105, and there's like four of them. And they joined when they were like, 14. And the stuff that they're saying is like, this is. Something kind of made me cry. There's a man named kenichi Ozaki. He's 97 years old. He enlisted in 1943 when he was 15. And he told the New York Times, quote, in their last breaths, no one shouted for the long life of the emperor. They called out for their mothers. And then another guy said, tetsuo Sato, he's 105. And he said, they wasted our lives like pieces of scrap paper. Never die for emperor or country tree. Just like.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Afterwards, like, why did we do that? You know, it just. It breaks my heart.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And we'll do it again and again and again and again forever, until Earth's gone. So congratulations, everyone.
>> Farz: Yeah. Is what it is.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Terrible. It's felt so. It just feels so sad for this stuff that's happening today that is so similar, you know, And.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Well, the fear and, like, want to take care of your family, so. I've had a sad two weeks.
>> Farz: I've been very bullish on AI lately, because it will decide for us what's right.
>> Taylor: That's true.
>> Farz: And how could that go wrong?
>> Taylor: How could that go wrong? No, when it's just the robots, we'll.
>> Farz: Be like, well, you know, it's gonna be funny. Is like, in 500 years, people are gonna, like, somehow dig up and find the Terminator movies and be like, oh, there's a documentary about this.
>> Taylor: Exactly. Oh, they knew and they did it anyway. They did. We did. There is at least one time per baseball season where I will hold on to the chain link fence and scream and ask them what movie it's from. And like. Like, most people are like, what are you doing? Imagine me turning into a skeleton.
>> Farz: That scene scared me so bad when I was a kid and I saw that movie. When she turns into a skeleton, it's terrifying.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God. I know. And that. I mean, that's what happened to real people. I don't know. Yeah, it sucks, you know? And, like, people just most of these people, and I'm thinking about these people, and I'm thinking about people in ancient wars who were like, jesus Christ. I just want to have, like, watch my four goats and not die, you know? And, like, not. I'M not, like, doing anything crazy. I just want to, like, not die. And you have no choice, because the emperor of all emperors of all time, or the general or the dictator or whatever is like, I want this and this and this. This. You're like, fine, I'll put a pot on my head and go outside and try to do something, and I'll die for this. Why?
>> Farz: Do you know how long it was between this and when the atomic bombs were dropped?
>> Taylor: This was in March, Those were in August. Took a month.
>> Farz: So he had months to be like, I'm done. We're done with this. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And they didn't. And we were like, we're not gonna do this. We're not gonna go there, buy land and risk people. Which, you know, I don't disagree.
>> Farz: Yeah. I think there's a problem with all this stuff is that there's a valid argument on both sides. Actually, there's not really a valid argument on the Japanese side here. There's not argument on the American side. On the Japanese side was like, what, are you going to keep attacking us in Hawaii? And, like, what do you do? Your only alternative is to cause mass revolts and complete destruction or do that and also lose a bunch of your own people.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Anyways, that was going to happen. Yeah. Either way, it's going to be terrible, so.
>> Farz: Well, that was uplifting. Thank you for sharing.
>> Taylor: You're welcome. I feel awful. And. Yeah.
>> Farz: Alrighty.
Daniel: Do you think FDR knew Pearl harbor was going to happen
Well, you know what? Maybe for my episode, I'll come with something that is happy.
>> Taylor: People love it. So I was gonna say we got two emails about. I mean, which is a lot for us about Morgan's Wonderland, people being like, thanks for telling a nice story. So thank you for us. That was lovely.
>> Farz: Yeah, it was Keith. Thank you, Keith, for writing in and for listening. And there was somebody else.
>> Taylor: Yes, I think Jason. Jason. Yes. Very, very kind.
>> Farz: And Daniel wrote in saying, hey, those really cool episode. We can get back to, like, the blood and gore soon. And you deliver.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Oh, God. Yeah, you're welcome. Danielle, this is for you. It was John who emailed it and said, thank you. So. Thank you, John. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, I know, I know. Like, the. Just if. If you. This was all you did. If you. This was like, just. If I. If I was the person who wrote the book that I read. Just read. I feel like that's just years of your life that are just so devastating, you know, like. Yeah, if you study any of these battles or any of these things and. And I'm interested in them and I do study them and, you know, and I do want to learn these things, but you just think about the humanity and you think about people and you just like, it's my heartbreak because I just want to, like, hold all the children and be like, don't let this pass on to the next generation. Like, just try to help each other. The money is here, the food is here, the stuff is here. Like, why don't we just live good lives? And I know we won't, you know.
>> Farz: But, yeah, I actually want to get to the bottom of why Hirohito decided to attack the U.S. i kind of feel like maybe Hitler. I don't know any of this, but maybe like, Hitler was like, hey, man, this is getting really ugly. And you're. You're in this with me. You got to distract these guys. And he was like, cool, I'm with you, Hitler. Or something. Like, it had to be something super stupid.
>> Taylor: So I. A lot of the. Oh, it says it wasn't. It wasn't like, just a decision, but he was like, in that. Whatever. I'm just Googling it. But I. My cousin just moved to Okinawa. She's in the. In the Marines. And a lot of the men that I know in town who, because we live. I live so close to a military base, a lot of them have been to Okinawa. And my. Someone that I co. Coached baseball with a couple years ago, he had been to Okinawa and he had, you know, been in the military. And we were talking on, like, what conspiracy theories? And I was like, do you think the FDR knew Pearl harbor was going to happen? And he was like, absolutely. Like, I think he knew that, like, something was going to happen. And then because the. We had just like, loaned a bunch of. A bunch of battleships to the UK And Churchill was like, you have to help us. And the United States was like, we can't help you and go in unprovoked. So they needed to be provoked to be able to go in and do it. So, like, we were ready to go. We just needed to be. We needed something to make us do it because the American people were going to. We're going to be like, we're really far away from them. Let them fight it out. You know, even though obviously it has, like, global repercussions. If, like, Hitler had won Europe, like, we wouldn't be here. Like, he wouldn't. He would have figured it out. But, like, we needed a reason to join that war. And Pearl harbor was that.
>> Farz: So Chatgpt is telling me that it was due to important part preemptive strike doctrine where Japan thought that it could cripple the US specific fleet at Pearl harbor and then basically have free reign over the rest of Asia and the US would never recover. Which is like, man, you had some.
>> Taylor: Bad intelligence, some bad advice. I know.
Taylor: Thank you for listening. If you have any other ideas, please do let us know
And then I do want to. Not soon because I'm so depressed, but I don't. I do want to talk, to think about, talk about like the stuff that the Japanese did in China, you know, like the terrible things they did in Nanking and like things like that. Like the brutality of, of. Of those things.
>> Farz: Yeah, there weren't. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Like, no. And then. And that's what I. That's why I think about the children. Like the children would have grown up to be a part of, for the most part of that of that society. That was brutal, you know, so like. But they're children and they don't have to, you know. And like they didn't because. Because they lost. They didn't do that. And they're not. It's not like Japan is like brutally trying to attack things. They're just like hanging out and building things.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. Most industrious, like countries and technically advanced countries in the world.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And that's. And they made that decision. So that was always an option. You know what I mean? I don't know. Yeah, you can choose. You can choose. Goodness, you people.
>> Farz: What did Rodney King say? Can't we all get along?
>> Taylor: Yeah, well, we can't so. Well, congratulations. Yeah, that's it. Thank you for listening. Thank you everybody who wrote in. If you have any other ideas, please do let us know.
>> Farz: How do they let us know?
>> Taylor: Email us doom to philpot gmail dot com. All socials doomed to fail Pod. I'm putting slowly putting stuff up on tick on Tick tock, etc. It takes forever. But I also did a episode this week of our business podcast. Business episodes. Let me tell you what those are real fast. I put this up online. Just some of our. We have so many different topics, but there is. Hold on, where did it go? Some of the ones that we did specifically about business things, a lot of them are yours. Far as I did. We did the Edsel Ponzi schemes Juicero three parts on the PayPal mafia. I put Edwin Wrist in there because he was like selling those weird things and I'm like, what are you doing? And so Ferrari, Enron and I did Action park as well in there because it was like weird business decisions there, like lying about having insurance and stuff. So listen to those, and I link to all of those episodes in the notes of that episode.
>> Farz: Sweet. Well, yeah, as Taylor said, write to us, give us your feedback. Good, bad, whatever.
>> Taylor: Every time you send me an email, I forwarded to Fars with, like, 7,000 exclamation points because I'm so excited that someone emailed us.
>> Farz: So we get a hundred emails a day.
>> Taylor: Just so far as is like, stop forwarding me all of these. But I do it anyway.
>> Farz: I'm gonna have to upgrade my Gmail account.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: All righty. Well, thanks, Taylor. Anything else?
>> Taylor: That's it.
>> Farz: Sweet. We'll go in and cut things off there. Thank you all.