Notes
1 Parts of this essay are adapted from Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
2 Dower mentions an estimated 183,367 civilian deaths in air raids prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (298). Due to the chaos of these air raids, evacuations of Japanese civilians before and after the attacks, and fires that destroyed city records, no one knows exactly how many people died in these Allied air attacks. Some sources estimate 200,000 or more prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with hundreds of thousands more wounded and missing. See also Sherry’s The Rise of American Air Power (esp. 413, n. 43). For additional documents and testimonies related to the impact of the US strategic bombing campaign against Japan, see www.japanairraids.org