Stories like these retain an essential vitality, and a power through candid retelling.
 | | An aerial view of Tokyo after the March 10 bombing.U.S. Air Force, via Associated Press |
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More than 15 years ago, about a year after the American invasion of Iraq, as violence had escalated and the occupation was clearly going in bad directions for Iraqis and Americans alike, I had dinner with a book editor in New York City. The editor wanted to brainstorm ideas for covering the war at book-length. |
It was a dreary, uncertain and deeply dishonest time. The patterns of bloodshed and escalating fighting indicated Iraq’s painful slide, and yet American officials in Washington and Baghdad were still acting, in public at least, as if the violence could be quelled and occupied Iraq would emerge as a stable, functioning state. |
Over the course of our conversation, we came to a decision neither of us expected at the outset: to forgo doing a book. It was simply too soon to expect an element we craved: official candor. The ground-level participants were still too close to their actions, too bound by career concerns and the restrictions of their employment or simply too young to speak with openness, understanding and moral rigor at any scale. Newspapers, with their shorter formats, might be able to find pockets of candor, but could we round up enough insight to sustain 300 or 400 pages while people were still enmeshed in the confusion and ugliness of a war that had turned out nothing like its organizers predicted? We decided to keep working and wait. |
Whether we made the right decision is debatable, as we can all point to books published quickly after a military campaign or event that have enduring moral or literary power. But the underlying thinking was sound. It can take time to gain fluency in a subject, and even more time for participants to muster the candor required to roll back official propaganda, evasions, omissions and lies, and then to erode the nostalgia that settles around too many airbrushed historical accounts. |
I thought about that dinner this week when I read the latest installments of “Beyond the World War II We Know,” a series of articles unrolling this year on the website of The New York Times Magazine. The recent articles, a pair of stories about the American firebombing of civilian neighborhoods of Japan in 1945, told from the perspective of both a survivor and the aircrews behind the attacks, served in many ways as a reminder of the moral and personal forthrightness that immediate histories of war often lack. |
BEYOND THE WORLD WAR II WE KNOW |
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The first article, “The Man Who Won’t Let the World Forget the Firebombing of Tokyo,” by Motoko Rich, profiled one survivor’s sustained insistence that the truth be shared. It’s an urging against complacency, ignorance and the apparent desire of governments not to address their responsibilities for acts that strain the imagination and conscience. Rich wrote: |
“Over the course of nearly three hours, an attack by the United States Army Air Forces killed as many as 100,000 people — more than some estimates of the number killed the day of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. But while the Japanese public — and the world — rightly remember Hiroshima as a living symbol of the horrors of nuclear war, the Tokyo firebombing is generally regarded as a footnote.” |
“Can you imagine standing in front of an open bomb-bay door and smelling a city burn up?” one of them said of the experience of being in the waves of aircraft flying low over the flames. “It was terrifying. At low altitude like that, I didn’t wear an oxygen mask. All I can say is that the smell was nauseating. I’ve never smelled anything like it since, and I don’t want to.” |
Three-quarters of a century after the United States burned Japanese neighborhoods to the ground, stories like these retain an essential vitality, and gain power through candid retelling. More like them will be coming in the months ahead, as will more of the candor readers need to grasp what has occurred in the wars of more recent times, including those that have been waged by the Pentagon since 2001. |
C.J. Chivers is assigned to The New York Times Magazine. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and is also the author of “The Gun,” a history of automatic weapons. |
The Afghan War Casualty Report: March 2020 |
 | | At least 27 people were killed in an attack on Friday in Kabul. The Islamic State in Afghanistan claimed responsibility.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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At least 113 pro-government forces and 23 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month. [Read the report.] |
 | | Gunnery Sgt. Diego D. Pongo, left, and Capt. Moises A. NavasU.S. Marine Corps |
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That’s the number of Marine Raiders who were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday during an operation against Islamic State fighters. Gunnery Sgt. Diego D. Pongo, 34, of Simi Valley, Calif. and Capt. Moises A. Navas, 34, of Germantown, Md., were part of a unit locked in a brutal gun battle while clearing a well-defended cave complex in mountains roughly 40 miles southwest of Erbil. The U.S. deaths are the first of 2020 in the nearly six-year American campaign against the terrorist group. |
After his death, former Marine Raider Tyler Kistner submitted this tribute to At War about Captain Navas: |
The first time my wife, Marie, and I met Capt. Moises “Mo” Navas and his family, we were new to the Camp Lejeune area. He went out of his way to bring all the new Raiders to his house as a welcome party for us. Captain Navas treated everyone as if they were lifelong friends, as if we were fellow family members getting together for a reunion. Every officer wanted to emulate him, and every enlisted Marine wanted to work under him. His humor always brought civility to emotional and chaotic situations. As a husband and father, he was unmatched as a role model. He was a strong man of faith. His love for his wife, who was his middle-school sweetheart, was unwavering. His daughter and three sons were the center of his world. As an elite Marine Raider, Captain Navas was a protector and fighter with an unconquerable spirit. This deployment was going to be his last. Before he left, he talked about how he was looking for a military position that would keep him home and give him quality time with his wife and children. To say we lost a friend in Mo would be an understatement. The Marine Raider community lost a fellow brother and a true leader. |
Here are five articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | American soldiers boarding a plane last year in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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Rockets struck Camp Taji. The rockets that killed three and wounded more than a dozen coalition troops Wednesday night were most likely Iranian Fajr-1 rockets, which are copies of a Chinese rocket called the Type 63. These short-range, unguided weapons are cheap, mass-produced and far different from the large ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Ayn al Asad. [Read the article.] |
“We’re still in a kind of amber light or yellow zone.” The Pentagon is a microcosm of the inherent contradictions in how companies, government agencies and people across the country are trying to deal with the coronavirus. [Read the article.] |
“This is wrong. And it serves no national security purpose.” As part of the peace between the U.S. and the Taliban, two classified documents detail what should happen over the next 18 months. The Taliban have read them, but most Americans haven’t, nor have many of their elected officials. [Read the article.] |
“All 5,000 should be released before the beginning of talks.” President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan on Wednesday ordered the phased release of thousands of imprisoned Taliban fighters, caving in on an earlier refusal that was threatening to derail the next steps of the American-negotiated peace plan for the country. [Read the article.] |
“Work as fast as you responsibly can because these people are old.” Since 1979, the U.S. Justice Department has hunted down collaborators in Nazi war crimes to deport them back to their home countries. The latest target was a 94-year-old man in Tennessee said to have been a guard at a concentration camp in Germany. [Read the article.] |
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