10 - Creating a Cordon Sanitaire: US Strategic Bombing and Civilian Victimization in the Korean War

Summary

The Korean War was one of the deadliest conflicts of the post-World War II era for civilians. One of the leading causes of civilian deaths was U.S. strategic bombing, which, after an initial period of restraint, obliterated the cities and towns of North Korea beginning in November 1950. This chapter argues that the key factor that explains the shift in U.S. bombing strategy was the battlefield situation faced by U.S. forces. U.S. B-29 bombers were ordered to burn down cities only when Chinese intervention in the war threatened to overrun U.S. ground forces. These incendiary attacks were meant first to deter and complicate Chinese entry into the war, and later to destroy any means of supply, sustenance, or shelter for enemy troops—in other words, cities, towns, and villages. Although U.S. officials never admitted to targeting North Korean civilians, this is true only because almost everything in North Korea was defined as a military target. In doing so, U.S. leaders collapsed the combatant-noncombatant distinction completely. This allowed Americans to deny that they were targeting civilians intentionally, but only by reclassifying hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths as “collateral damage.”