Published Airpower Journal - Summer 1995
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The Atomic Bombings of Japan:
A 50-Year Retrospective

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between. . . .

                           -Alexander Pope Essay on Man

If 7 December 1941, a date "which will live in infamy,"1 conjures up a vision for Americans of treachery,2 death, and destruction, then Hiroshima and Nagasaki are two names synonymous the world over with horrific power that, having been unleashed, still threatens mankind's fragile grip on survival. ("Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war."3) If we were to do the same thing today, the consequences would likely be "as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer."4

Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent an experience of multiple dimensions. What happened? What led up to the bombings? Why was it done at all? What does it say about the character of the nation that did it and the nation that received it? What are the implications? These issues have fascinated historians, military scholars, and, indeed, the whole world for the past 50 years.

The events leading up to President Harry S Truman's decision to use weapons of unprecedented mass destruction against Japan are curious and-even now-controversial. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the bombings, a great deal of study, debate, and global attention will be paid to the circumstances that affected the decision. It is imperative that US military officers be aware of the issues surrounding this singular event.

No doubt, 6 August 1945 began as any other day. Before it ended, something dramatic occurred that would change the way nations dealt with each other-perhaps for all time. On this day at 8:15 A.M., the Enola Gay-a B-29 Superfortress named after its pilot's mother-opened its bomb-bay doors over Hiroshima-at the time, a military center and the seventh largest city in Japan5-and dropped a single weapon with a destructive capacity of biblical proportions. The crew on board and the team of scientists who developed the bomb were not sure whether the weapon would detonate. Nor were they sure what would happen if it did.6 In the split second in which a blinding flash of light told the crew of its success, approximately 70,000 souls7-who, until that fateful moment, had been going about their normal, everyday lives-perished, and the world changed:

It was a kind of hell on earth, and those who died instantly were among the more fortunate. Thousands died-vaporized, crushed, or burned. But there were tens of thousands more who were still alive and those who could move began to mill about the city, seeking relief from shock, fire, and pain. Thousands threw themselves into the Ota River, which would be awash with corpses by the end of the day.8

The bomb dropped that day had been in the making at top-secret laboratories, by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, since December 1941-before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.9 This $2 billion crash program, code-named Manhattan Project, began in the United States at the suggestion of physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, refugees from Nazi Germany. The scientific community feared-rightly so-that Nazi scientists were mastering new technology in physics necessary to manufacture such a weapon.

The single weapon ultimately dropped on Hiroshima,10 nicknamed Little Boy, produced a yield of approximately 20,000 tons of TNT-roughly seven times greater than all of the bombs dropped by all of the Allies on all of Germany in 1942. It produced an airburst approximately 1,000 feet above the city, creating a fireball with a diameter greater than the length of three football fields. The temperature at ground zero reached 5,000 degrees centigrade. The shock wave and its reverse effect reached speeds close to the speed of sound. A mushroom cloud rose to 20,000 feet in the air, and 60 percent of the city was destroyed.11 Three days later, on 9 August, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb. Its target, Nagasaki-a port city in southern Japan-was 30 percent destroyed, and approximately 40,000 of its citizens were killed.12 On 15 August, Japan surrendered-unconditionally-thus ending a world conflagration in which 50 million people died.13

One of the threshold issues presented by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the nature of the target itself. Many people have asked how it came to be that whole civilian populations could become the proper object of direct and purposeful military action. That is, the target at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was principally the civilian population itself.14 There was no "militarily" significant target to speak of beyond that, although Hiroshima did support an army headquarters. The answer has to do, in part, with the changing concept of modern warfare:

World War I ushered in the period of total war, a type of war consisting of the combination of many allies, enormous cost, unlimited use of highly destructive weapons, and unlimited war aims. Hostilities were conducted over greater territory . . . than ever before. More troops were employed, supported by the home front population.15

As a consequence, the age-old distinction between enemy combatants and noncombatants began to blur.16 It became clear that the civilian population was absolutely necessary if a nation were to successfully prosecute a total war effort. Without economic and war-production aid from the "civilian front," military war fighters would be less able to continue their efforts.17 Thus, a gradual escalation of war fighting occurred, which included a nation's war-fighting sustainment capability and its civilian population. This trend manifested itself in the firebombing attacks on Dresden and Tokyo, the V-weapon attacks against London, and-eventually-the atomic attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The rationale most often proffered to justify the use of such awesome weapons is "military necessity."18 That is, dropping the bombs actually served to save lives. One must consider that the immediate military context of the decision to use atomic weapons was the Okinawa campaign-the last major battle of the war. Located 350 miles off the coast of mainland Japan, Okinawa "was to be used as a jumping-off place for the long-anticipated invasion of Japan." During the Okinawa campaign, 49,151 US servicemen were killed or wounded.19

Okinawa was the first campaign in which the notorious kamikaze appeared. Over 5,000 American sailors died20 as a result of approximately 350 kamikaze missions21-the heaviest toll the US Navy had suffered in any episode of the war, including Pearl Harbor.22 More than just militarily significant, the kamikaze represented the totally committed enemy-even to the point of fanaticism. If a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands became necessary, the kamikaze was a harbinger of the degree of military difficulty that, in all likelihood, awaited an invasion force.

In the aftermath of the bitterly fought Okinawa campaign, the president was clearly concerned that an invasion of the well-defended Japanese homeland could give rise to an "Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other."23 Years later, in his memoirs, Truman cited Gen George C. Marshall's observation that approximately 1.5 million soldiers would have been required to invade Japan. Of this number, 250,000 would likely have been casualties, and an equal number of Japanese would have died.24 However, some people suggest that recently declassified documents indicate that no such "official" estimate existed and that estimations of casualties ranged from a low of about 25,000 to a high of 46,000.25 If true, this would make the figure of 250,000 nothing more than a "postwar creation"-an effort to justify, in some measure, the use of this weapon on the grounds of military necessity. Truman also went on to say, perhaps tellingly, that "the need for such a fateful decision never would have arisen had we not been shot in the back by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December 1941."26 Moreover, it has been further suggested that American citizens

recognize that pre- and post-Hiroshima dissent was rare in 1945. Indeed, few then asked why the United States used the atomic bomb on Japan. But had the bomb not been used, many more, including numerous outraged American citizens, would have bitterly asked that question of the Truman administration.27

Was the decision militarily justifiable as a "numbers" analysis? By this time, was the world so numbed to killing that the bombings were just one more step in an ongoing process? Or was the decision militarily unnecessary? Were we trying to "communicate" with the Russians for a better postwar environment? Even worse, was it an act of vengeance,28 complicated by overtones of racism29 and fanned by home-front propaganda?30 From our vantage point, we may now be far enough away from these events to draw conclusions dispassionately yet still be close enough to remember them as contemporary.31 Thus, I believe it is entirely appropriate for us to consider these truly difficult-even painful-questions. At the same time, we must keep in mind that this matter-like other complex issues-is subject to different interpretations, depending upon the perceptions and biases of the people being asked about it.

To be sure, servicemen who would have been tasked with the invasion of Japan were relieved by the bombings. It meant, quite simply, that now they could hope to "grow up to adulthood after all."32 The following account, written by a British soldier in 1945, illustrates the point:

I was all set to fly to Okinawa . . . and, since the Japanese had almost no air defenses, we were to bomb, like the Americans, in daylight.

I found this continuing slaughter of defenseless Japanese even more sickening than the slaughter of well-defended Germans. But still I did not quit. By that time I had been at war so long that I could hardly remember peace. No living poet had words to describe that emptiness of soul which allowed me to go on killing without hatred and without remorse. But Shakespeare understood it, and he gave Macbeth the words:

. . . I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade
no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

I was sitting at home, eating a quiet breakfast with my mother, when the morning paper arrived with the news of Hiroshima. I understood at once what it meant. "Thank God for that," I said. I . . . would never have to kill anybody again.33

The bombings meant something else to the scientists and other people associated with the development effort.34 Originally tasked with beating Nazi Germany to the punch, they clearly achieved this objective. However, as the war in Europe ended before Germany could develop the bomb and before we had any need to use it there, questions began to arise about whether or not it was necessary-or appropriate-to use the bomb in Japan:

Most of the Manhattan Project scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos laboratory, tended to favor use of the bomb. But as the war drew to a close, a growing minority questioned whether Japan should be the target of the terrible weapon that had been developed-they felt-mainly as insurance against a Nazi bomb.35

Leo Szilard was this group's most emphatic dissenter. To his credit, he continued expressing his concerns about the morality of using such indiscriminate weapons long after the end of the war. After Japan's surrender, even Oppenheimer became well aware of the implications for mankind:

Today . . . pride must be tempered with a profound concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of . . . [the] world . . . then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.

The peoples of this world must unite, or they will perish. This war, that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand.36

From the perspective of US government officials who made decisions regarding the development and use of atomic weapons, the bombings aided in bringing about the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri.37 While he was still at the Potsdam Conference with Churchill and Stalin, President Truman found out that that the atomic bomb had been successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The conference itself was a difficult give-and-take among the Allies over the terms upon which the war should be ended and the conditions for the postwar peace. Buoyed by the Alamogordo success, Truman had decided upon and issued a harsh ultimatum-the Potsdam Declaration-that called upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction."38 Japan had been subjected to overwhelming aerial bombardment, including firebombing and carpet bombing of most of its cities and civilian population, as well as devastating naval blockades by long-range submarines and surface vessels. Consequently, despite opposition from the imperial army, Japan began to realize that it had lost the war. Clearly defeated, the Japanese made peace overtures through the Russians, who had not yet entered the Pacific war. Their only request was that they be allowed to keep their emperor.39

The Japanese were ready to surrender. However, they hesitated in accepting Truman's Potsdam Declaration because it was silent-or, at least, ambiguous-on the subject of the emperor's status. Indeed, many people think that the United States's insistence on unconditional surrender amounted to "the chief obstacle to an early Japanese surrender,"40 which then rose to the level of "tragedy."41 In response to the Potsdam Declaration, the Japanese government issued a statement to its people, which led to one of history's most consequential "failures to communicate." While posturing with the Russians, the Japanese suggested that they were "withholding comment"42 on the Potsdam Declaration. From reports in Japanese newspapers, the United States concluded that the Japanese believed that the declaration was of "no great value" and was being "ignored."43 Taking this response to be a rejection, Truman ordered that the atomic bombs be dropped as a means of ending the war promptly (and on favorable terms) and of "influencing" Stalin.

Was this an honest misunderstanding? Did we explore adequately the diplomatic channels that were clearly open to us? Did we hear only what we, for some reason or another, wanted to hear? Were we so concerned about Russia and the postwar peace that we were willing to sacrifice thousands of Japanese men, women, and children to this awful weapon? Was our insistence on unconditional surrender driven only by some vague domestic notion-inherited from our own Civil War,44 perhaps-that this was the only true end to a war of this magnitude? Certainly, these are difficult questions. But some things seem clear: we did achieve a quick end to the war on favorable terms; an invasion of Japan was unnecessary; President Truman never publicly regretted45 his fateful decision;46 and the United States and the Soviet Union were thrust into what was to become the cold war:

Never had any nation attained such immense power as had the United States at the end of the Second World War. It had a strong battle-tested army, a navy more powerful than all the other fleets combined, the world's greatest air force . . . and in the atomic bomb held the secret of a weapon capable of such vast destruction that no one had a defense against it.

Just as Americans were dismayed by Russia's politics . . . Russians were alarmed by American politics . . . and by efforts . . . to confine the secret of the atom bomb to themselves.47

The single most gripping characteristic of our time has been the reality of life in the shadow of potential nuclear devastation. We learned to live with theories of strategic "deterrence," such as mutual assured destruction (MAD). Just as the arms race escalated, so did uncertainty:

Armed with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons capable of being launched from land, sea, and air, the United States and the Soviet Union became prisoners of a cold war process that neither controlled. Locked into a nuclear arms race justified by national security, they increased their peril, diminished their economies, and promoted an international atmosphere of impending catastrophe.

How to prevent the nuclear system from becoming a way of death was the question that dominated the debate over nuclear weapons from their inception.48

Such was one of the legacies of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From the Japanese perspective, the bombings have had profound implications. The entire postwar era has been driven, to a large extent, by what happened to Japan-not only as a vanquished nation, but also as the only nation in the world to have suffered an atomic attack:

As victims of the advent of atomic weapons, the Japanese people could argue convincingly that wars were ever more destructive, that a new age in international affairs was accordingly at hand, and the sovereign prerogative to go to war must be renounced. No other nation embraced the liberal hope of the future world order with the enthusiasm of Japan, for no other nation's recent experiences seemed to bear out the costs of the old ways.49

Consequently, Japan developed an attitude that it could grow into a "modern industrial nation . . . without arming itself" and, further, that its recent past "justified devoting national energies entirely to rebuilding the national livelihood."50 That Japan has been able to achieve astounding postwar economic growth is clear-so much so, in fact, that because of this success (attributable, some say, to the government's "favorable" attitude towards its businesses), the term Japan, Inc.51 has been used, somewhat pejoratively, to describe the phenomenon. As a corollary, some people believe that Japan has taken unfair advantage of its attitude against rearmament in general and nuclear weapons in particular. In fact, some of them think that Japan has had a "free ride":

Criticism grew particularly vocal around the time that Japan's economy emerged as the third largest in the world. Some critics, in fact, attributed Japan's economic success to the abnormally low defense burden it carried, arguing that its remarkable growth was only made possible by US assumption of the lion's share of the defense burden.52

As the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan approaches, the debate over whether or not the Japanese somehow qualify as "victims" of the war has already begun. The Smithsonian Institute announced plans to commemorate the event by holding a special exhibition, including the display of the Enola Gay. Plans for the exhibition were circulated for public comment and drew an immediate and adverse reaction, principally from US veterans groups who felt that the Japanese, by being cast as victims, were escaping from their responsibility for waging aggressive war and that such an exhibition amounted to revisionist history. The Smithsonian took these comments under advisement and cancelled its originally planned exhibit. It now intends simply to exhibit a portion of the fuselage of the Enola Gay and write a brief explanatory text.53

Clearly, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has had a profound effect-not only on Japan, but on mankind. Although it stands as historic testament to our intellectual capacity to discover and harness immense power, it also demonstrates the fragility of life. We can no longer be certain that such forces could never destroy us. In exhibiting our willingness to use such power in war, we have shown a capacity towards self-destruction that bears constant vigilance. Thus, the advent of the nuclear age forever changed the relationship among nation-states. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have shown us that there is, ostensibly, a point beyond which we will not allow ourselves to be pushed without exhausting all military resources available to us and that, no matter how costly the consequences, we are prepared to justify those actions accordingly. Therefore, we now have "no more important challenge . . . than how to prevent the unprecedented catastrophe of nuclear war."54 It is critically important that US military officers carefully consider the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.&127;

Notes

1. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, address to a joint session of Congress, 7 December 1941.

2. On 22 November 1994, the government of Japan (GOJ) acknowledged, for the first time, that its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was conducted while the negotiations process was still technically ongoing. Without actually apologizing, the GOJ indicated that it had instructed its ministers in Washington to deliver a diplomatic note indicating that the talks then being conducted between the US and Japan were terminated. The note was not delivered until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The GOJ's recent statement seemed to offer as an explanation that their ministers did not recognize the urgent need to deliver the note. Cable News Network television report, 22 November 1994.

3. Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 1, line 273.

4. Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: The Modern Library, 1944), 529.

5. Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kodansha, Ltd., 1983), 149.

6. Some scientists feared that a nuclear chain reaction, once set in motion, might ignite the earth's atmosphere or crack the earth's crust at the point of the bomb's detonation. Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 51.

7. "The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," in The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, vol. 7, ed. David MacIsaac (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1976), 3.

8. William Sweet, The Nuclear Age: Power, Proliferation and the Arms Race (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1984), 10.

9. For an excellent rendition of the facts and circumstances leading up to the making and use of the atomic bombs on Japan, see Wyden.

10. The Outline of Atomic Bomb Damage in Hiroshima (Hiroshima: The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, March 1990), 4.

11. Wyden, 9-10.

12. The New American Desk Encyclopedia (New York: Signet Books, 1984), 808.

13. Chronicle of the 20th Century, ed. Clifton Daniel (Mount Kisco, N.Y.: Chronicle Publications, 1987), 598.

14. Certain Japanese cities had been "exempted" from bombing and "reserved" for a nuclear weapon. Hiroshima had been selected as one of these for several reasons (e.g., its size ["a large part of the city would be destroyed"] and its adjacent hills [to "focus" the blast effect]). Wyden, 197.

15. Headquarters, Department of the Army, International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), 11.

16. Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bombs Reconsidered," Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1 (January-February 1995): 135. Some people will contend that Professor Bernstein argues with a revisionist's logic. Nevertheless, it is important that military officers be aware of the issues and their presentation.

17. Hiroshima had "home factories" that produced artillery, aircraft parts, and machine tools. Wyden, 197.

18. William Lanouette, "Why We Dropped the Bomb," Civilization 2, no. 1 (January-February 1995): 28.

19. "Outlook: Database," U.S. News & World Report, 3 April 1995, 12.

20. John Keegan, The Second World War (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 572.

21. "Outlook: Database," 12.

22. Keegan, 561.

23. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 543.

24. Keegan, 574.

25. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds., The Reader's Companion to American History (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1991), 799.

26. Chronicle of the 20th Century, 811.

27. Bernstein, 152.

28. Soon after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, President Truman received a number of entreaties that such weapons not be used again. In response to one such request by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, President Truman articulated what was quite probably the existing sentiment among most Western nations at the time, when he said, "Nobody is more disturbed over the use of the atomic bomb than I am, but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast." Wyden, 294.

29. The internment of Japanese-Americans at the outbreak of hostilities is, of course, a well-known event in American history. Additionally, American attitudes during the war have been described as follows: "The Americans never seemed to be as morally sensitive about bombing Japan as they were about attacking Germany. The attacks on Japan were ferocious and indiscriminate. There were several reasons for this. In the first place, in the war with Germany, the Americans distinguished between the Nazis, who were the real enemy, and the German people, who were at least partly victims. No such distinction was made when considering the Japanese; the entire population of Japan was perceived as the enemy. Further, there was a racial prejudice against the Japanese that the Americans did not feel towards the Germans." Louis A. Manzo, "Morality in War Fighting and Strategic Bombing in World War II," Air Power History 39, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 35-50.

30. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the United States's participation in World War II, the National Archives conducted a spectacular exhibit entitled "Powers of Persuasion," from February 1994 to February 1995. It was an exhibition of poster art from World War II advocating bond drives, scrap drives, ration plans, and patriotism. This latter concept sometimes took the form of very aggressive posters sensationally depicting the "evils" of Japan and Germany. One such poster characterized the Japanese and Germans as vermin, the clear implication being that they should be "exterminated." Archibald MacLeish-at the time, director of the forerunner of the Office of War Information-described the power and purpose of such World War II "information" campaigns as follows: "The principal battleground of this war is not the South Pacific. It is not the Middle East. It is not England, or Norway, or the Russian Steppes. It is American opinion." Stacy Bredhoff, Powers of Persuasion (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), i.

31. Indeed, the timing of such an inquiry is important. As Thucydides instructs us, it is difficult "because of its remoteness in time, to acquire a really precise knowledge of the distant past or even of the history preceding our own period." Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1954), 13.

32. Spector, 559.

33. Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 121.

34. For a complete and current description of Dr Oppenheimer's role in the Manhattan Project and the attitudes he and his fellow scientists developed towards the atom bomb and its use, see "Oppenheimer Investigated," The Wilson Quarterly 18, no. 4 (Autumn 1994): 34.

35. Sweet, 14.

36. Dyson, 16.

37. Alexander DeConde, A History of American Foreign Policy, 3d ed., vol. 2, Global Power: 1900 to the Present (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978), 200-203.

38. Wyden, 226.

39. Charles Strozier, "The Tragedy of Unconditional Surrender," in Experience of War: An Anthology of Articles from MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, ed. Robert Cowley (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1992), 505-10.

40. Spector, 545.

41. Strozier, 505.

42. The Japanese word mokusatu was used by Prime Minister Suzuki to describe his government's reaction to the declaration. This word could be interpreted to mean anything from "ignore" to "treat with contempt." Wyden, 233.

43. Spector, 549.

44. For an interesting discussion of the importance of unconditional surrender, see Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 135.

45. Spector, 554.

46. Cabell B. H. Phillips, The Truman Presidency: The History of a Triumphant Succession (New York: Macmillan Co., 1966), 57.

47. DeConde, 204.

48. Foner and Garraty, 798.

49. Daniel Okimoto and Thomas P. Rohlen, eds., Inside the Japanese System (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), 236.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 172, 217.

52. "The Common Security Interests of Japan, the United States, and NATO," in Joint Working Group of the Atlantic Council of the U.S. and the Research Institute for Peace and Security (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1981), 109.

53. David Umansky, director, Office of Public Affairs, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., telephone interview with author, 4 May 1995. Umansky distinguishes between a "commemorative" exhibit and an "informational" exhibit. He states that the institute's original plans impermissibly blended the two and, upon reflection, the exhibit was cancelled and a new commemorative-only exhibit will be conducted.

54. National Academy of Sciences, Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Nuclear Arms Control: Background and Issues (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1985), ix.

Contributor

Col Ralph J. Capio (BA, Rutgers University; MPA, State University of New York, Albany; JD, Union University, Albany Law School; LLM, George Washington University; MIBS [in progress], Saint Louis University) is an Air Force judge advocate assigned to Headquarters Air Mobility Command as chief, Contract and Air Law Division, Office of the Staff Judge Advocate. Colonel Capio is a distinguished graduate of Squadron Officer School, as well as a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and the national security management program of National Defense University.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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