#MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER WW2 HOW TO#

It's a way of capturing the might of American air power that emerged out of this conflict.' 'Letting the maps speak for themselves' 'It's meant to convey, quite crudely, only the destruction of this city – and the absolute dominance of the Army Air Forces by the end of firebombing campaign. It shows how the Air Force turned its attention to smaller areas after destroying the larger cities with more military and industrial significance.īeyond that, Fedman thinks it reveals still another transformation when compared with earlier maps, which appear 'precise and professional.' This is a damage report map of Kofu, assessing the extent to which this small city was decimated. 'And I think this map reveals that mentality.'But it was a later map the researchers found even more striking.

#MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER WW2 HOW TO#

'They did a lot of research into the nature of Japanese urban spaces so they could understand how to best burn them to the ground,' Fedman said. They used black to indicate the most flammable areas, which happened to correspond to the most densely populated and working-class neighborhoods of Tokyo, Fedman explained. It shows the extent to which war planners sought out information about the vulnerability and inflammability of Japanese urban spaces. This map was produced by geographers in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the US intelligence agency formed during the war that would become the CIA. Still other maps reveal the extent to which the Air Force went to maximize this destruction. Some of these bombs contained napalm, and others a jellied-petroleum formula. 'They lowered their bombing altitude and loaded their B-29s with incendiary bombs, which they released with the hope the fire would grow and spread,' he said. The blackened maps would inspire the title of the paper they collaborated on: 'A cartographic fade to black: mapping the destruction of urban Japan during World War II.įrustrated with the results of precision bombing, the US Air Forces turned to a technique that was pioneered by the Allies, especially the British Royal Air Force, over the skies of Germany. Taken together, what these maps reveal is the 'shift to the strategic doctrine of area incendiary bombing,' he said, pointing out that the black represents 'huge areas that were burned to the ground the destruction of entire cities, described by some scholars as urbicide.' 'What's really intriguing … is how you get from the precise dots of the target maps to these huge swaths of destruction that encompassed whole cities.' 'A cartographic fade to black' 'We both realized there was a lot more to this story,' Fedman said. Karacas quickly wrote back that he, too, was intrigued. He maintains the website, digitizing maps and primary sources to make them publically available.įedman emailed him scans of the target charts, and Dr. So he sought out a leading expert on the Japan air raids: geographer Cary Karacas, a professor in the Department of Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at The City University of New York in Staten Island.

The black mass represents the parts of Tokyo that had been burned to the ground. One such map was of Tokyo in early July, 1945.įedman was struck by the 'big black blob overtaking the image,' as though a bottle of ink had spilled on it. This gap was thrown into focus by other maps stashed away in the U.S. 'A striking gap between the rhetoric and the reality'Īs Fedman soon discovered, however, 'there was a striking gap between the rhetoric and the reality of these bombings.' 'The idea was to surgically take out only those targets.' 'It neatly reveals the doctrine of precision bombing - high altitude strategic bombing of military and industrial targets,' explained Fedman, a doctoral candidate in history at Stanford who studies Japan's cartographic history. It neatly reveals the doctrine of precision bombing. Maps reveal how Japan’s cities were destroyed during World War II Essay on incendiary bombings awarded 2012 Best Paper Prize by the Journal of Historical Geographyĭavid Fedman was doing research at Stanford University's Branner Library when he stumbled across some maps that left him confounded. They were produced by the US Army Air Forces during World War II.Ī target chart dated July 1942 has concentric circles over the coastal city of Osaka, with small dots marking targets sprinkled throughout the map.

Map of the world after ww2