Wartime Propaganda Films: What do to when American bombers attack (Video)

Here are a couple Japanese wartime propaganda films I recently came across. The focus of both is to educate civilians on how to respond to incendiary bomb attacks from American planes.

Film 1: Cartoon characters teach the Japanese people about firebombs

The cartoon characters in this video introduce the concept of incendiary bombing and explain how citizens can extinguish the fire from each bomb. The methods range from simplying putting a bucket of water over the bomb to throwing wet blankets over the fire. After the explanation there is a short cartoon showing the cute animals of Japan responding to an American bomber attack and putting out the fires from bombs before any major damage is done. If you look closely, you can see the evil face of President Roosevelt appear in one of the fires shortly before the Japanese citizens eliminate it.

Film 2: Live-action incendiary bomb fire prevention

This time instead of cartoon characters, real people show viewers that with a little work, the fires from American bombs can be stopped before the entire neighborhood burns down.

Both films were no doubt responsible for convincing many people that they could save their homes from American firebombing if they took the steps outlined in the films. While it may have been possible to put out the fires from an individual bomb through the hard work of several people, the reality was that the American bombers came in massive formations and dropped a vast number of firebombs. Citizens who stayed near their homes in the believe that they could stop the fires were overwhelmed by the concentration of bombs and in many cases were trapped by the fires and burned to death. It is said that the March 9, 1945 firebombing, in which as many as 100,000 people were killed, had such a high death toll because a large number of civilians had stayed out of bomb shelters so that they could fight the firebombs using techniques similar to those shown in the propaganda films. Survivors of the Tokyo bombing filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government last month, demanding that the government take responsibility and pay compensation to vicims. It will be interesting to see if the government’s firefighting propaganda will be mentioned in the case, and how the courts will react to their challenge.