Chounin A wa Akuyaku Reijou wo Doushitemo Sukuitai - Vol. 8 Ch. 38.1 - Commencing Assault

[ShinduPK4]

I'm going to be honest — I really don't care about the war subplot. Like, not at all. I'm half-skipping it every time I read a new chapter. It just feels like content padding to make us watch Anastasia's slowly crumbling psyche.

 

[Auretor]

If our girl get raped i am dropping this so hard just like my poop this morning

 

[WillTell]

it's been a while since I read the webnovel, but I think the war was wrapped up much quicker in it

 

[AmethystLord]

I love smell of war crime in the morning

 

[Psychronia]

Man, some Tanya-ass rhetoric going on acting like there's nothing to feel bad about firebombing former civilians.

Enemy or not, fire bombing certainly isn't going to be pretty. And people from a world who have never even heard of it before aren't going to know just how scary it is.

 

[Outflanks10]

God I feel like we are watching the fat boy being dropped.

Thanks for the transatlion SaebaScans

 

[Acolytus]

Firebombing was by far the most devastating weapon ever used against Imperial Japan, far outstripping the lives lost and damage caused by Nuclear weapons many times over.

Since this is written from a Japanese perspective it makes sense that firebombing would seem so devastating.

Firebombing is indeed devastating, but it seems to be pretty shit as a demoralization tool.

Case in point, Japan indeed got firebombed to hell and back and yet they wouldn't entertain an unconditional surrender until the nukes came into the picture.

 

[finalm]

Truth be told, it's only a war crime because someone says it is, now try and enforce it.
We've seen how both sides in the israel/palestine and ukraine russia wars have been committing massive war crimes at scale on each other, and jack is done about it, so yeah, it's only a war crime if someone will actually enforce it, you can claim anything is a crime but it means nothing if you can't prevent it from happening.

Both sides, huh? Are you that scared of "controversy" or does symmetrism just come naturaly, no matter the what's actually going on?

 

[horsewithnoname]

So there are emos that think actual mental illnesses are cool because hey im feeling more than you do im such an empathetical victim while on the other end of the spectrum are war crimes are cool because we're tough asses stoic realists that can handle dark jokes. Internet truly is the full society experience.

 

[finalm]

Attacking civilian targets intentionally, both have done it though i will give you this much, ukraine's hasn't been as severe as russia's (likely due to lack of ability in comparison).

What targets were those, when were the attacks and how many civillians died in them? Are you aware what actually consitutes a war crime?

 

[Raydnt]

Im gonna be fully blind in the next months and I will miss this series so sad I will never see the ending of this.

Read the web novel

 

[finalm]

Does killing enemy combatant count as warcrime?

Since in essence he gave them 5 days to declare themselves combatants (staying) or civilians (leaving)
So at this point 'there's no civilians in the city'

Get that Fortunate Son playing.

That's not how it works IRL. You can't expect an entire population to evacuate, for various reasons (like not being allowed to, for starters, or not being capable of it due to disability, illness etc.) and you do not get to re-classify those that linger as combatants. Any violence against non-combatants is still a war crime unless you can prove they were only masquerading as such (in which case it's them that are the war criminals).

 

[TakeyaMomiji]

I can't wait for the MC meet again with his heroine quickly and also punishing that motherfuggin pig soon

 

[booterror]

We really doing the firebombing of Tokyo metaphor here?

W e l p.

It's not a war crime the first time!

 

[finalm]

They can run outside. Run into a wall of spears waiting for them

Nope. The typical war tactic for walled cities/fortresses was to close the gates, strangely enough.

 

[finalm]

The same thing happened in 1945.

He could very well bomb the front of the fortress, demonstrating its destructive power, and then give them a chance to escape. That way, the chances of everyone evacuating or surrendering would be much higher.

A walled city under siege won't just open it's gates to let people evacuate. Even if it wasn't under siege yet, they'd probably not allow anyone to leave if they were expecting one. After all, a population backed to the wall is easy to convince to take up whatever weapons available and help defend it. Whoever ruled such a city is would certainly be executed, if it were to fall, so he's not going to care about much more than repelling the assult for as long as possible. Also, there was no real notion of any humanitarian safe passage for non-combatants (or of those either), so whoever fled would still be killed on the road if caught.

 

[finalm]

Firebombing was by far the most devastating weapon ever used against Imperial Japan, far outstripping the lives lost and damage caused by Nuclear weapons many times over.

Since this is written from a Japanese perspective it makes sense that firebombing would seem so devastating.

That's only because you're comparing Tokyo, a city with millions of people, to Hiroshima, a city with (then) hundreds of thousands. Percentage-wise by population, the nuclear bomb was far more devastating. If it were dropped on Tokyo, you'd get massively more casualties than from firebombing.

 

[dexdoujinmanga]

ANNASS! ANNASS! WOOHOOO!! ANNASS!

 

[StormSen]

Truth be told, it's only a war crime because someone says it is, now try and enforce it.
We've seen how both sides in the israel/palestine and ukraine russia wars have been committing massive war crimes at scale on each other, and jack is done about it, so yeah, it's only a war crime if someone will actually enforce it, you can claim anything is a crime but it means nothing if you can't prevent it from happening.

• To be a war crime, there needs to be an internationally accepted legal system (in our world established through treaties, etc.) that define various actions as "war crimes".
• We have no idea what, if any, legal system exists in the world and whether they have defined actions any actions as war crimes. However, since no one there has raised the question of "war crime" we can conclude that there is no such international law defined.
• Now, whether this qualifies as war crime by our standards, IDK. Civilians are being warned and given time to evacuate. So techically not a war crime. And keep in mind that the city serves as a military fortification, which makes it a valid target.
• (Generally our war crime laws allow civilian casualties - within limits. E.g. a standard rule of thumb for war in general is 1 civilian death per 1 soldier death.) Warning: I am not an expert, just relating bits that I've heard over recent/current wars.
• OP does have a point that "winners are the enforcers". However, that doesn't change whether something is a war crime, it only determines whether or not the crime is prosecuted. Note that the US has prosecuted soldiers who engaged in war crimes. But that's on the small scale. US clearly has not prosecuted itself for large scale strategic decisions -- e.g. firebombing civilian targets in Japan.

Re "both sides" in current wars, I wholeheartedly disagree, but that's a separate and hotly political topic. I'm not going into it here.

A couple of additional notes:

• Moral issue of the firebombing of the town. MC is going to use incendiary bombs designed specificially to start fires in structures -- which at medieval level would burn down the whole town. If the civilians have not experienced it before, then they would not believe the threat that "the entire city would be destroyed" plus in addition, where would they go? If the city gets destroyed then mass death would follow from that (destruction of economic/food system, etc.) Hence the "warning" that is given is rather weak, and most people will refuse to leave. IMO, MC should refuse (and never should have made those bombs in the first place.)
• Japan is pretty sensitive to firebombing (since US did it to them), and because fires springing from earthquakes, etc. have regularly wiped out JP cities. Of course, JP is not quite so sensitive to the massive war crimes that they committed on surrounding nations, prisoners of war, etc.

I'm only somewhat disagreeing with OP here. The concept of "war crimes" is complicated in theory and practice. The distinction between definition and practice is very pronounced and almost (but not entirely) favors the victors.

 

[finalm]

Sorry, I was talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As in this chapter, demonstrating the weapon's destructive power would be enough to resolve the dispute.

That is very doubtful. In all of history this only really happened with Japan and even then it's not that good an example. By the time of the bombs, Japan was already pretty much beaten, but their doctrine prohibited surrender, not to even mention an unconditional one. The Emperor himself was said to have been keen to find a strong enough reason to surrender while still keeping some face. The bombs were a good one. If not for that, they might have just held on till hardly anyone was left. After all, before that other cities were also pretty much completely destroyed and that didn't cut it.