Air Raid Research Articles

A cartographic fade to black: mapping the destruction of urban Japan during World War II

In this paper we examine the history, production, and use – practical and rhetorical – of maps created by the United States government during World War II as related to the development and execution of aerial bombing policies against Japan. Drawing from a range of maps and primary documents culled from libraries and archives in the United States, we argue that maps provide an important, and hitherto neglected, means through which to trace the exploration and eventual embrace of the incendiary bombing of Japan’s cities. In particular, our aim is to show how maps, along with the men who made and used them, played a central role in the planning and prosecution of air raids on urban Japan. We also address the mobilization of American geographers into the war effort, the re-configuration of America’s spatial intelligence community during World War II, and the ways in which maps were constructed in the context of total war.

Civil Defence in Britain, 1938-1945: Friendship during Wartime and the Formation of a Work-based Identity

This article challenges historians' concentration on national, class, and gender identities in wartime. It argues that those civilians recruited to work in air raids, as Air Raid Wardens and in the Auxiliary Fire Service, developed an intimacy within each group born of conflict, training, socializing, discussing, and experiencing danger together in a confined and identifiable space. They enjoyed a close bond of friendship that helped create a particular identity within the group and with the wider public and the geographical space in which they worked. Analysing the ways in which this identity was formed is crucial for an understanding of the relationships between air raids, work, and identity.

Bombing the FIAT: Allied Raids, Workers' Strikes, and the Italian Resistance

This article examines the impact of Anglo-American air raids on the FIAT workers between the end of 1942 and the liberation of Turin in April 1945. One of the most bombed cities in Italy, Turin was also the country's most important industrial centre. Following the first ‘area bombing’ raids on the city and its industries, the Turinese working class initiated strike movements that extended beyond the surrounding region - first in March 1943 and again in March 1944. Workers' protest was not in isolation, but connected with discontent within civil society at the incapacity of the Fascist regime to protect the population from bombing. This research, based on a variety of archival sources found in national archives in Italy and the UK, as well as in local archives in Turin and Milan, suggests correlations between the Allied bombing of Turin, the FIAT workers' strikes, the collapse of the Italian home front, and the start of the Resistance.

The Stressful Life Events and Parkinson's Disease: A Case–Control Study

A case-control study was conducted in order to investigate the possible link between stressful life events and Parkinson's disease (PD). A group of 110 consecutive newly diagnosed PD cases treated at the Institute of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Belgrade University, was compared with a control group comprising 220 subjects with degenerative joint disease and some diseases of the digestive tract. The case and control subjects were matched by sex, age (±2 years) and place of residence (urban/rural). According to conditional multivariate logistic regression analysis, PD was found to be significantly related to retirement (odds ratio--OR 18.73, 95% confidence interval--95%CI 1.9-175.4), birth of own child (OR 66.22, 95%CI 8.3-526.3) and air raids (OR 5.66, 95%CI 2.4-13.5). The risk of PD significantly increased with the number of stressful events. The results of the present study support the hypothesis that stress may play a role in the development of PD.

Patrick Loudon Mollison

Patrick Loudon Mollison

Disease in the Capital: Nationalist Health Services and the ‘Sick [Wo]man of East Asia’ in Wartime Chongqing

The Chongqing Bureau of Public Health, established shortly after the Nationalists relocated to the wartime capital, faced frequent air raids, rampant inflation, and acute personnel shortages. Still it accomplished an astonishing amount of work, demonstrating its commitment to public health as a barometer of modernity, national stability, and political fitness. The Bureau also treated male and female bodies differently, institutionalizing gender roles through its public health administration. This paper illustrates differences between medical care for men and women, arguing that Chongqing health officials’ myopic focus on maternal issues when discussing women’s healthcare, their failure to address highly skewed gender ratios in the patient reports and vaccination statistics that their office received on a monthly basis, and the relatively late opening of the city’s most substantial maternal health facilities, all point to male-centric priorities within the administration. Military health took priority not only because of the war, but because soldiers’ health conditions and facilities were so appallingly dismal. Thus, wartime health conditions reveal the continued haunting of modern China’s great specter, the “Sick Man of East Asia,” and two types of disease in the wartime capital: the Nationalist state, politically diseased, failed to protect its civilians and soldiers from common diseases.

Conserving our Wartime Heritage

This paper describes the scientific research and investigations undertaken to establish the causes of deterioration of a Stanton air raid shelter at a World War II airfield in East Lothian, Scotland. The concrete is fairly strong and has low sorptivity, but the main concern is the concrete delamination caused by the corrosion of the steel reinforcements. It is shown that the corrosion is due to chloride ions present in the concrete rather than carbonation of the concrete. The materials used in the concrete mix appear to be the source of the chlorides, possibly because calcium chloride was used as a set accelerator. It is argued that the conservation of the shelter is crucial to preserve the completeness of the airfield and potential treatment options are considered.

Book Reviews

JOHN FLOWER, Accounting and Distributive Justice (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-87177-8, pp. 201)

Beyond 'Consent' or 'Terror': Wartime Crises in Nazi Germany

Nicholas Stargardt addresses the question of the remarkable resilience of the German state and society during the Second World War. Like Italy, German cities were subjected to massive Allied air raids from 1942 onwards, but there was no German equivalent to the strike-wave that swept northern and central Italy in the spring of 1943, and it is this comparison which is the starting point for Nicholas Stargardt’s analysis of how German society coped with the crises of this period. He argues that it was that society’s capacity to recover from crises which made it possible for the regime to go on fighting the war till the end. He proposes that the dynamic quality of these crises takes us beyond the conventional explanations of state-society in terms of coercion and consent, and into an exploration of the transformation of subjectivities and social values, in particular the moral and psychological power of fear and hope.

Beryl Patricia Hall (née Woodhouse), 1917–2010

Beryl Patricia Hall (née Woodhouse), 1917–2010

Explosive Sources Prove the Validity of Homogeneous Isotropic Linear Viscoelastic Models

Abstract Intrinsic material absorption, as exemplified in the attenuation of seismic waves, is a key parameter in several seismological fields, in particular earthquake engineering. The advances of the last few decades in the theory of wave propagation in linear anelastic materials provide an opportunity to examine more completely the implications of intrinsic material absorption on seismic wave propagation. In the present paper, we analyze the records of two near-surface open quarry explosions of recently rescued, unexploded World War II bombs dropped by Allied air raids and recovered at a few meters depth close to the Milano Centrale railway station. Recordings obtained at epicentral distances of 1.4 km and 2.5 km show clear separation of body and surface waves and strong evidence for elliptical prograde particle motions for P waves. Classic elasticity theory predicts linear longitudinal motions for P waves. Hence, synthetic seismograms computed using computer codes that are based both on elasticity theory and on homogeneous attenuating waves (Herrmann and Ammon, 2002) do not account for observed particle motions. On the contrary the theory of wave propagation in homogeneous isotropic linear viscoelastic media (Borcherdt, 1971, 1973, 2009) accurately accounts for the observed characteristics of the recorded motion. Application of the theory provides empirical estimates of the inhomogeneity γ values (0≤ γ π /2) and evidence of intrinsic material absorption at low strain levels (less than 10 -6 ), as quantified by independent empirical estimates of Q -1 .

Berlin at war

Berlin was the city at the very center of World War Two. It was the launching pad for Hitler's empire, the embodiment of his vision of a world metropolis. Berlin was also the place where Hitler's Reich would ultimately fall. Berlin suffered more air raids than any other German city and endured the full force of a Soviet siege.In Berlin at War, historian Roger Moorhouse uses diaries, memoirs, and interviews to provide a searing first-hand account of life and death in the Nazi capital--the privations, the hopes and fears, and the nonconformist tradition that saw some Berliners provide underground succour to the city's remaining Jews. Combining comprehensive research with gripping narrative, Berlin at War is the incredible story of the city--and people--that saw the whole of World War Two.

Introduction|Foreword

It was in England that Mircea Eliade started writing the volume which would be published nearly a decade later as Traité d'histoire des religions (Patterns in Comparative Religion), as attested by the book's Avant-propos de l'auteur, dated ‘Oxford 1940/Paris 1948.’ Eliade also states in his autobiography (1988, p. 84) that ‘I read, took notes, and elaborated a plan of a vast synthesis of the morphology and history of religions, a synthesis I had glimpsed instantaneously in an air raid shelter during an alarm.’ In order to recreate the historical and political environment in which Eliade conceived and began to write his fundamental theoretical book, I have sketched the history of Great Britain's early involvement in World War II, the dramatic political events in Romania during Eliade's diplomatic service in London, and the British government's intrigues that held him a virtual ‘captive’ from September 1940 to February 19411

Voices from the Rubble Society: "Operation Gomorrah" and Its Aftermath

In late July 1943, much of Hamburg was destroyed in British and American air raids. In the so-called firestorm, about 35,000 of the city's inhabitants perished. A research project conducted by psychoanalysts from the Hamburg University Medical Center and historians from the Research Institute for Contemporary History analyzes the impact these experiences had on individuals, their children and grandchildren. Drawing on narrative interviews as main sources, this project focuses on the memories of those affected by the bombings. The research takes place at a time when the last generation of Holocaust survivors is slowly leaving the sphere of public attention, and some Germans belonging to this age group who were not persecuted by National-socialism apparently feel forced to ascertain their identity as victims—victims of the war. This article is primarily interested in the attitudes toward Nazism gleaned from these narratives.

Bernhard Witkop (1917-2010)

Bernhard Witkop (1917-2010)

Gastric Cancer: A Well-Behaved Helicobacter pylori-Related Disease?

Interest in birth cohorts as a means to investigate gastric disease stemmed from a 1962 paper published in The Lancet by Mervyn Susser and Zena Stein, a South African couple who had recently immigrated to Manchester, England [1]. By a series of fortuitous circumstances Mervyn was invited to contribute a review on the epidemiology of peptic ulcer for a symposium to be published in The Practitioner, a monthly journal distributed free to UK general practitioners for 140 years. In their own words, Susser and Stein had ‘‘at most a half-dozen joint or separate publications, no track record in the subject of peptic ulcer, and no knowledge of the disease, that was a rarity in the Black South Africans among whom [they] had worked’’ [2]. While preparing the review Susser and Stein explored epidemiologic changes over time and experimented with different ways of plotting mortality data, in an attempt to determine whether mortality from peptic ulcer was constantly rising, as it was widely believed at the time. Using birth cohort analysis, a method that follows the incidence of a condition (in this case mortality from peptic ulcer) in an aggregate of individuals having a significant event in their life histories in common (in this case the year of birth), Susser and Stein detected a pattern of waxing for the late 19th century births and then waning through the births of the 20th century. Only briefly mentioned in the review for The Practitioner, their analysis was later expanded for the seminal article ‘‘Civilization and Peptic Ulcer’’ [1]. At that time, stress related to industrialization, urbanization, and the deprivations and air raids Britain endured during World War II seemed to offer a fitting explanation for the mortality trends observed. The paper, which was incorrectly assumed to provide evidence for the psychosomatic nature of peptic ulcer, became widely popular. The discovery—or, as purists would have it—the re-discovery of Helicobacter pylori by Marshall and Warren in 1984 radically changed our concepts of ulcer disease and gastric cancer [3]. Enter Amnon Sonnenberg. From 1984 on he applied birth cohort analysis to explore time trends in the mortality of a variety of gastrointestinal diseases [4–7], but it was not until the early 1990s that the crucial influence of H. pylori infection became apparent [8, 9]. In 2002, The International Journal of Epidemiology dedicated an issue to a Festschrift in honor of Mervyn Susser and Zena Stein, now both professors emeriti at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York. In a commentary entitled ‘‘The unresolved mystery of birth-cohort phenomena in gastroenterology’’, Sonnenberg et al. wrote that ‘‘gastric cancer is actually the only disease whose trends vary in the time-dependent fashion one would expect from a well-behaved H. pylorirelated disease.’’ In a new study published in this issue of Digestive Diseases and Sciences [10], Sonnenberg follows further the time trends of gastric cancer and peptic ulcer in six European countries for the past 56–85 years. This analysis, as it is often the case, answers some questions while generating new enigmas: what happened in Europe that caused gastric cancer mortality to rise in generations born during the first half of the 19th century, with a peak between 1870 and 1890? What caused its subsequent decline? Why do gastric and duodenal ulcers show similar time trends, but delayed by about 30 years? Do these findings still fit with the good behavior expected of a Helicobacter pylori-related disease? Figure 1 is a highly simplified attempt to provide a graphic interpretation of what may have happened. R. M. Genta (&) Caris Research Institute, Caris Life Sciences, 6655 North MacArthur Blvd, Irving 75039, Texas e-mail: robert.genta@utsouthwestern.edu

Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars by Roxanne Panchasi

brought Ms. Teyte to this role that would give her pleasure and renown until her retirement almost half century later. In this way, the chapters pass from one woman to another and from one side of the Atlantic to the other, showing the challenges that the singers faced. International recognition came through stage and recording careers as well as writing, lecturing, teaching, and even music administration. These successes were, however , accompanied by fear of rejection and by constant financial insecurity, and problems with personal relationships plagued all three. It was clearly not an easy time to excel in the arts for even these exceptional women. Not surprisingly, in her concluding chapter Opsted reemphasizes her admiration for Georgette Leblanc, Mary Garden, and Maggie Teyte. They brought to life Mélisande, the mysterious princess, and lived full lives themselves. And, thanks to Opsted’s work, they come to life for readers in the book Debussy’s Mélisande. Metropolitan State College of Denver (CO) Ann Williams PANCHASI, ROXANNE. Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8014-4670-2. Pp. 203. $39.95. Roxanne Panchasi’s masterful exposé on the uncertain times of l’entre-deuxguerres examines how French scientists, engineers, designers, military strategists, politicians, and writers conceived multiple scenarios to shape the France of the future, a nation stronger than before 1914. Each of the five chapters in Future Tense examines key objects “invested with deep cultural meaning” (5), such as the human body, Paris, the French border, French civilisation, and the French language, and explains how various observers constructed the future of France through the lens of these objects. The author first explores how engineers and designers transformed everyday life by inventing “appliances” designed to compensate for the limitations of the human body. Some, like Jules Amar’s prosthetic arm, were meant to give back autonomy and self-esteem to war veterans who had been amputated. Others helped women complete their household chores more efficiently or provided ultimate relaxation such as la chaise longue, symbol of a new line of furniture Le Corbusier had developed as “prosthetic, life-enhancing substitutes” (33). Undoubtedly, the single most important concern of the French military during l’entre-deux-guerres was the defense of the country. Panchasi examines key plans envisioned to make France invincible in the event of a new war. For example, we learn about plans to build a faux-Paris, a replica of the capital to be built away from the real city and used as decoy to save the real Paris from air raids. We also discover Le Corbusier’s vision of a new Paris, “a contemporary city” (67) where skyscrapers and large green spaces would reshape its landscape and create new landmarks. Panchasi discusses other plans such the construction of the controversial Ligne Maginot or the development of la défense passive that promoted a healthy diet and reproduction as weapons against the enemy. The author’s exploration of the interwar anxieties and fears leads her to analyze the mixed emotions of the French towards America at the end of World War I. Panchasi’s overview of popular books on the subject points out that to many, America had emerged as the “potential nation of the future,” young, modern, forward thinking, and not defined by or tied to its past. But to others, Reviews 647 the very essence of this attraction could potentially endanger the core values of France. Among the many examples of books critical of the American Way, she singles out Georges Duhamel’s America the Menace: Scenes from the Life of the Future, a work that attempted to vilify every aspect of the American culture and warned the French against the appeal of America. In her final chapter, Panchasi explains the circumstances that led to the perception that even the French language was threatened in the years directly following the war, a fear triggered by the decision to make English the second official language at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Furthermore, the proposal for the invention of an international language, Esperanto, presented at the first meeting of the League of Nations in 1920 increased this...

曖依村荘庭園の構成と意匠に関する復元的考察

The Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture begins the concrete action of aiming at the conservation of modern landscape heritage. The Agency for Cultural Affairs is also proceeding to protect the gardens and the parks of the modern age. Most of the existing gardens in Tokyo are the feudal lord's gardens of the Edo period and a few modern gardens which were constructed during and after the period of the Meiji era and still are remain the same shape they were originally. However, the main portion of the Aiison-so garden which was constructed by Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931) still exhibits the same organizational structure. It is a remaining case considered to be very precious within the modern gardens of Tokyo. Therefore, we considered the composition design of the Aiison-so garden restoring it according to the material of the visitor's records, and defined that while the Aiison-so garden was destroyed by air raids in 1945 to Eiichi who settled down in the Aiison-so in 1901 to assume basic materials for maintenance. The present study shows that Aiisonsou garden is a typical of garden that had most of the element of a modern garden.

THE CHANGE OF PURPOSE OF EXECUTION AND PASSAGE IN THE BUILDING EVACUATION DURING WORLD WAR II

This study aims to investigate and clarify the procedure of building evacuation projects implemented in the Japanese cities toward the end of the WW II. First, before March 1945, the Japanese government's insufficient acknowledgement of the damages inflicted by air raids upon cities resulted in little progress in evacuating buildings anywhere in the country, except in Tokyo. Second, comparison between the Tokyo and Kyoto cases after the massive destruction by air attacks in March 1945 revealed a change in the purpose and method of evacuation. Consequently, after the change, the evacuation appeared to be almost an auto-destruction of urban areas.

Kenneth Oswald Albert Vickery

Kenneth (“Ken”) Oswald Albert Vickery was born in Scotland where his father was posted, but he was a true Devonian. He spent many nights of his student life fire watching...