Targeting Civilians in War

75 years ago, near the end of World War II, Japan and the US engaged in a desperate battle in Okinawa. The Americans used weapons of unprecedented lethality, targeting civilians as well as the Japanese military. Civilians sought shelter in caves alongside the Japanese troops they thought would defend them, only to face hunger and threats of execution if they surrendered. This is the story of ordinary people who were caught in the conflict and perished during the battle's final month.

This edited volume analyses siege warfare as a discrete type of military engagement, in the face of which civilians are particularly vulnerable. Siege warfare is a form of combat that has usually had devastating effects on civilian populations. From the near-contemporary Siege of Sarajevo to the real and mythical sieges of the ancient Mediterranean, this has been a recurring type of military engagement which, through bombardment, starvation, disease and massacre, places non-combatants at the heart of battle.