This page is referenced by:

• 1 2018-09-22T00:17:11-07:00 "Central Directives": U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) Disinformation Campaign about Area Bombing, 1944-1945 3 plain 2019-02-20T05:15:00-08:00

  "B-29 attacks on Japan should receive only moderate play [in the Middle East].  The people of the Middle East abhor the destruction of property and the killing of women and children which accompany area bombing, no matter how necessary these are to the war.  To play up the destruction wrought by our air force against Japan does not serve our propaganda purposes in the Middle East."  -- Office of War Information, Overseas Operations Branch, Washington D.C.  Weekly Propaganda Directive.  Middle East.  23 March 1945, p. 3.
   

  With Executive Order 9182 of 13 June 1942, President Roosevelt established the Office of War Information (OWI),  “to facilitate the development of an informed and intelligent understanding, at home and abroad, of the status and progress of the war effort and of the war policies, activities, and aims of the Government.” Roosevelt appointed the acclaimed CBS journalist Elmer Davis to head up the sprawling bureaucracy that resulted, eventually numbering more than 3,000 employees and a budget during its first year of $37 million.
  
  Despite the idealistic phrasing of Roosevelt's enabling Executive order, the OWI was a propaganda machine of gigantic scale, maintaining official press briefing points to be promoted on all continents, to all audiences, with both an Overseas and Domestic branch.  The majority of the OWI's work consisted of filtering, drafting, updating, circulating, monitoring, and censoring news for all media markets. 
  
  A review of the OWI's "Central Directives" and "Regional Directives" regarding the U.S. air policy and actions in 1944 and 1945, shows that the OWI was fully aware of the devastating attacks on civilians, was fully aware that these attacks would be considered immoral by domestic and global publics, and shows the OWI actively colluding with the Combined Chiefs of Staff to cover-up the area attacks by portraying them as directed at military and industrial targets.   Days after the devastating saturation-bombing attack on Tokyo that killed 100,000 persons, the OWI instructed:

  "Every effort should be made to stress the military nature of the targets attacked.  Stress on specific targets and on the importance of the small manufacturer and sub-contractor to Japan's war industry will be useful.  Note the negative on unofficial comment on saturation-bombing.  We should also place heavy stress on General LeMay's statement on the total destruction of Japanese industries." (OWI, Japan Regional Directive, 16 March 1945, p. 2)
   

  The OWI instructed all press outlets to assure that their press releases are “written from scientific or technological point of view. Care should be taken to avoid any reference to effect of weapons on individual enemy soldiers or populations. Use of any material which might be construed as an effort to terrorize enemy soldiers or civilian populations must also be avoided.”
  After the 9-10 March  incendiary attack on Tokyo, the OWI's Central Directives and Regional Directives show a heightened determination to avoid accountability for the massive destruction and killing that was then underway.  Knowing that it was saturation bombing conducted on the basis of very clear predictions of effectiveness, the OWI sought to deflect any questioning about the air plan then underway:

  "As part of our permanent air offensive give heavy play to communiques, photographs, and statements bf commanding officers of the 21st Bomber Command, especially official statements regarding the techniques of bombing now being employed. No unofficial comment on the merits or demerits of saturation bombing

  should be used."  (OWI Central Directive, March 14-21, 1945, p. 5)
   

  Just how much destruction should be reported, became a cause for official re-wording.  The 14-21 March 1945 Central Directive instructs outlets to "Emphasize the point made by Major General Curtis LeMay that 'the only thing the Japs have to look forward to is the total destruction of their industries, their vital industrial plants devoted to the war effort."  (p. 5)  The subsequent update, however, retracts and revises LeMay's statement to read "'our determination to carry out the systematic disruption' of Japan's war industries." In OWI-speak,  "there is a negative on..." meant that a certain idea or phrase is banned: "Consequently, for the time being there is a negative on the use of the term 'destruction' in connection with unconditional surrender..."  ("Japan Regional Directive," 23 March 1945). Riddled throughout the OWI Central and Regional Directives are blatant admissions that the targets were undefended. There must have been some general amnesia about the unambiguous wording of the 1907 Hague Convention, because the fact that the cities were undefended seemed to be a tremendous propaganda advantage to the OWI, given the frequency with which they trumpeted that fact.  We have already seen that General LeMay stripped his B-29s of defensive armaments in order to make more payload tonnage available to bombs.  In the first Central Directive to follow the terrible 9-10 March raid on Tokyo (still the world record for single-raid death toll and physical destruction in winged warfare, including the two atomic attacks), the OWI wished to stress this important fact:
   

  "Feature American statements concerning the lack of Japanese fighter interception or the ineffectiveness of anti-aircraft fire."  (OWI Central Directive, March 14-21, 1945, p. 5)

   

  ...and, on 23 March, the OWI Regional Directive:

   

  "Wherever possible, give heavy play to announced lack of Japanese fighter interception or ineffectiveness of anti-aircraft fire."

  
  
  The 23 March 1945 OWI Regional Directive then goes into great detail about the spin that outlets and press releases must apply to LeMay's firebombing campaign.  "Note particularly the following: 1) the ban on expressions of satisfaction, revenge, retribution, threats or moral concerns (this is a part of the overall aim to represent bombings simply as bombings and as a part of the war without attaching emotional significance to them)" ("Japan Regional Directive," 23 March 1945, pp 1-2).   Likewise, in the Central Directive for 21-23 March the OWI instructed:  "Refer to all B-29 raids as being directed against 'military or industrial areas.'" OWI, Central Directive , 21-28 March, pp. 1-2. The Directive continues:
   

  "We should always assume that our bombing is for purely military purposes. Identify, whenever possible, the military and industrial targets of the areas bombed. To other countries than Japan indicate the nature. of Japan's war economy which is based on small factories and household industries. Indicate the secondary military results of bomb damage': rail lines must be repaired:materials needed for military purposes must be consumed and manpower must be diverted. Avoid an apologetic or defensive tone or approach." (OWI, Central Directive , 21-28 March, pp. 1-2.)

  
  Paying attention also to the sensitivities of their Middle Eastern audiences, the same OWI officers in the very same 23 March Directives, speak frankly about those "moral concerns":  "B-29 attacks on Japan should receive only moderate play [in the Middle East].  The people of the Middle East abhor the destruction of property and the killing of women and children which accompany area bombing, no matter how necessary these are to the war.  To play up the destruction wrought by our air force against Japan does not serve our propaganda purposes in the Middle East."  -- Office of War Information, Overseas Operations Branch, Washington D.C.  Weekly Propaganda Directive.  Middle East.  23 March 1945, p. 3 The OWI's 23 March 1945 OWI Regional Directive also promotes the official  "household industry" justification for the area bombing: "2) that we play only to other countries and not to Japan the line concerning Japan's small factories and household industries because this, too, would sound to the enemy as somewhat defensive and, because he is aware of the nature of his own economy."   ("Japan Regional Directive," 23 March 1945, pp 1-2).  Note the phrase "the line concerning Japan's small factories..."  "The line" was and remains euphemism for a cover-story, revealing awareness that this is not truthful, something the enemy would know better than anyone" "play to other countries and not to Japan."  The OWI was extremely successful in the short and long term, with its careful control over the "line" to "play" with the press.  The Joint (US) and Combined (US+UK) Chiefs had, as we have seen, settled on the "necessary" killing of civilians justification based on the portrayal of Japanese war industry as dispersed into households.  Let us now turn to the capstone of these coordinated propaganda efforts: Hollywood's feature film productions that operationalize the full arsenal of mendacity to cover for LeMay's savage attacks on urban civilians.