Mapping 'Urbicide' in World War II

The more removed we get from World War II, the more important it becomes to remember the war that shaped the modern world, and yet the harder it becomes to find fresh angles of remembrance. In a recent issue of the Journal of Historical Geography, researchers David Fedman of Stanford and Cary Karacas of CUNY-Staten Island present visual evidence of the systematic destruction of 65 Japanese cities by U.S. military bombers — a process of "urbicide" they call "one of the most striking gaps in ... U.S. public consciousness regarding the major events of World War II."

Shortly after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the American military mobilized several units of mapmakers that ultimately played a central role in the planning of air assaults on Japanese cities. The Map Division of the Office of Strategic Services alone produced some 8,000 maps throughout the conflict. In their work, Fedman and Karacas use this wartime cartography to show how U.S. bombing of Japanese cities shifted from military targets to urban populations in general after 1943.