Talk:Bombing of Chongqing

message: :A conservative estimate places the number of bombing runs at more than 5000, with more than 11500 bombs dropped, the majority of which were incendiary bombs. The targets of the bombing were all residential areas, business areas, schools, hospitals and other non-military targets.
Please can we have a source for this information. Who is the conservative who made this estimate? Who recorded that the bombss were "all... non-military targets" note it does not say that "most... none military targets". Philip Baird Shearer
:These terror bombings were probably aimed at cowing the Chinese government, or as part of the planned Sichuan invaionsion.
Please can we have a source for the claim that it was terror bombing. Ie is there a Japanese document which states that it was the intent of their armed forces to cause terror. 
Is it possible that attacking the city also disrupted Chinese command and control and/or communications? Philip Baird Shearer 22:02, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Try this artcile:  for more links. It's in Chinese but it has quoted the evidence of some westerners in China at that time.
There are a number of detailed graphic accounts of these air raids by Edgar Snow in those reports he filed from Chongqing, as well as in his biography. 
On those taken place in 1939, "Acres of buildings had been destroyed in barbaric raids of May and June. The Japanese preferred moonlit nights for their calls, when from their base in Hankow they could follow the silver banner of the Yangtze up to its confluence with the Jialing, which identified the capital in a way no blackout could obscure."
"The city had no defending air force and only a few anti-aircraft guns...Spacious public shelters were being dug, but it was estimated that a third of the population still had no protection. Government officials given advanced warning, sped outside the city in their motor cars—cabinet ministers first, then vice-ministers, then minor bureaucrats. the populace soon caught on; when they saw a string of official cars racing off to the west, they dropped everything and ran. A mad scramble of rickshaws, carts, animals and humanity blew up the main streets like a great wind, carrying all before it."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.19.9.8 (talk) 05:09, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: People”s Daily
“During the five and a half-year period between 1938 and August 1943, the Japanese air force bombarded Chongqing, then China's wartime capital, in more than 200 sorties, causing great casualties and property destruction.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200112/23/eng20011223_87312.shtml “Wartime Japanese Bomb Found in Chongqing” Dec. 23, 2001
Global Action on Aging
“Most of the evidence will be in the form of oral histories from people old enough to remember the war years, when the city experienced more than 200 Japanese air raids, according to the paper.   About 11,900 Chongqing residents were killed in the raids, while 14,700 were injured, and 17,000 buildings were destroyed, the paper said. “
http://www.globalaging.org/armedconflict/countryreports/asiapacific/raid.htm “Chinese World War II Air Raid Victims Demand Compensation from Japan” July 19, 2004
Here is a Japanese source.
ZNET
The United States was not, of course, alone in indiscriminate bombing in the Pacific War. The Japanese Imperial Navy engaged in the first indiscriminate bombing in the Asia-Pacific region with the January 1932 attack on civilians on Shanghai. Thereafter, Japanese bombers targeted civilians in Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing and other cities. Chongqing, in particular, was targeted with more than 200 air raids over three years from the end of 1938, bringing the total death toll up to 12,000. Here, too, the Japanese were not targeting a military facility, but sought to destroy the Guomindang's centre of power and demoralize the civilians who supported this regime.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7868 Tanaka Yuki “Firebombing and Atom Bombing: an historical perspective on indiscriminate bombing. May 16, 2005
Originally appeared in 
“Japan Focus” http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1582 May 16, 2005
Note: Yuki Tanaka is a research professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute and a coordinator of Japan Focus. His books include Hidden Horrors. Japanese War Crimes in World War II. He contributed this article to Japan Focus.
 Malangthon 16:03 8, Oct. 2006
::The bombing strategy of the U.S. was hardly 'indiscriminate' - it was a targeting to hit Japanese industry (which had shifted to homes to a great extent) and break the will of the aggressive Imperial Japanese to force them to surrender. 50.111.52.253 (talk) 15:11, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: More sources

message: This is peanuts compared to Allied strategic bombing.  Would you characterize the devastation inflicted on Germany and Japan as horrific terror bombing on the part of the allies, or the assertion that they had legitimate military purposes as a blatant denial of responsibility for mass murder? Kensai Max 15:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  WP:FORUM & WP:SOAPBOX - completely inappropriate.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.18.208 (talk) 23:48, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

text: Peanuts? the phrase "they sowed the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind" springs to mind  Xyl 54 (talk) 14:26, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: An opinion

message: The Berlin article seems to state that it was bombed more times than Chongqing - can anyone clear this up? Megapixie 03:36, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Berlin article - [[Bombing of Berlin in World War II]] claims it was bombed 363 times 

message: Having studied the rape of naking I instantly recognised the photo on this page entitled "Casualties of a mass-panic during a Japanese air raid in Chongqing in 1941" - however I have to inform you that the photo is being used widely to alledegly depict the rape and murder of chinese women and children; here is an example http://www.gendercide.org/case_nanking.html
and this is by no means the only time i have seen it used for this purpose. Now what does the photo actually depict? who is right? --86.138.8.106 23:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  photo misuse 

message: Shouldn't there be an article called battle of Chongqing ?--69.157.65.49 (talk) 21:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: Does anyone have an overall figure for casualties? It seems to be missing from the article.Xyl 54 (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Casualties 

message: "Thus the campaign was one made against a defenceless target, and remains, like other Japanese atrocities during the war such as the Nanjing Massacre, highly contentious to the present day."
To be more exact, "like other Japanese atrocities" the Chongqing bombing was an atrocity? City bombing usually isn't referred to as "atrocity" on Wikipedia. Unless someone comes with an argument why that sentence should remain in the article, I will remove it. --Raubfreundschaft (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Removed.--Raubfreundschaft (talk) 16:55, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very non-neutral sentence in section "The raids" 

message: Shall we agree to describe all bombing campaigns directed primarily at civilian populations as terror bombing? The Germans described the Allied (English and American) attacks on their population centers as "terror attacks" (terrorangriff) and I believe the English doctrine of the time specifically designated civilians as the target of Bomber Command. Meanwhile, the Americans pretended that it was possible for the USAF to drop bombs from 20,000 feet and hit only factories and military personnel. On the other side of the world, were civilian deaths a concern at all during the American fire bomb raids on Japan in 1945? I believe the primary concern was winning the war.
My point is that if we are going to accept the premise that the Japanese were aiming primarily at civilians when bombing Chongqing (Chungking) and describe the Japanese bombing campaign as "terror bombing" we must possess the intellectual honesty to decribe the Allied strategic bombing campaigns against German and Japanese civilians as terror bombing as well. 
Doing so does not "whitewash" Axis war crimes and crimes against humanity, but we Americans and English can't have it both ways. If targeting civilians is "terror bombing" then any nation that targets civilians commits "terror bombing" -- even if that nation is England or the United States. (71.22.47.232 (talk) 10:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree completely with you, good sir.--Raubfreundschaft (talk) 16:53, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It is still listed as "terror bombing." Either edit to "strategic bombing" or edit the Bombing of Dresden and all of the like to be terror bombings as well. 165.134.208.176 (talk) 01:01, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There's acres of stuff in the Bombing of Dresden article about "terror bombing"; If you think it needs more I suggest you take it up there. And there's plenty of angst on the Allied side about the morality of bombing civilian targets; what isn't to be whitewashed is who invented it. Xyl 54 (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terror bombing 

message: The source was vague (information on the web of Japan). --大和屋敷 (talk) 05:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Number of Plaintiffs

message: The second paragraph of the article gives a statistic for the amount of bombs dropped and sorties completed by the Japanese. There is no source so I question the truth behind the statement.
:There was some dead site given which appears to not conform to WP:RS so I removed the paragraph. If somebody has a proper source feel free to add it again 8ya (talk • contribs) 20:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Fact Checking

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