On the night of March 9, the United States Army Air Forces launched their new bombing offensive against Japan. They dropped 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over 48 hours.

Almost 16 square miles (about half of the city) were incinerated, and about 100,000 civilians were killed in the "worst single firestorm in recorded history."

The atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have dominated WWII history, but as a single attack, the firebombing of Tokyo was more destructive.

The cluster bombing of the downtown Tokyo suburb of Shitamachi had been approved, which comprised roughly 750,000 people living in cramped quarters in wooden-frame buildings. Setting this “paper city” on fire was a kind of experiment in the effects of firebombing. It would supposedly also destroy the light industries, called “shadow factories,” that produced prefabricated war materials destined for Japanese aircraft factories.

The US military had waited for a clear and windy night to inflict maximum damage, and on 09 Mar 1945, the conditions were perfect.

Three hundred B29 bombers dropped nearly 500,000 cylinders of napalm and petroleum jelly on the target.

The raid lasted slightly longer than three hours—and continued the next day. “In the black Sumida River, countless bodies were floating, clothed and naked, all black as charcoal. It was unreal,” recorded one doctor at the scene.

The raid, which was a month after the firebombing of Dresden, brought mass incineration of civilians to a whole new horrific level. Hundreds of metres high and fuelled by strong winds, the firestorm quickly turned 40 square kilometres of Tokyo into an uncontrollable inferno.

Kisako Motoki, ten years old at the time, fled to a bridge to seek safety after her parents and brother had been burnt to death.

"I saw melted burnt bodies piled up on top of each other as high as a house," Ms Motoki said. "I saw black pieces, bits of bodies everywhere on the ground and burnt corpses in the water. I couldn't believe this was happening in this world… It was worse than hell."

She now holds regular seminars for schoolchildren at a privately funded museum dedicated to the victims.

The US should be charged with War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

The firebombing of Tokyo was designed to terrorise and bomb the Japanese into surrender, and it was also seen as "payback" for the Pearl Harbour attacks and the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war.

In just two days, more than 100,000 people were killed, a million mutilated, and another million made homeless.

Now, political allies, the US and Japan, have conveniently forgotten the Tokyo firebombing, but another survivor, Haruyo Nihei, said it was important the children of today remember.

"Japan will likely be involved in a future war, so I want our children to understand war destroys everything — families, buildings and culture," she said.

Ms Nihei also wanted the Japanese and US governments to acknowledge and apologise for the firebombings.

She also said American claims that the bombing targeted factories were false. "There were no big military factories in the areas they bombed on March 9. They did it as punishment," Ms Nihei said. "I believe they should be held accountable for war crimes too."

US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the raids, once said the US military "scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night... than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."

He also acknowledged that if he had been on the losing side, he would be charged with war crimes.

The evidence lies deep in the vaults of a memorial in central Tokyo, where large urns contain the ashes of more than 100,000 civilians. Most remain unidentified, but what is known is that the vast majority were women, children and the elderly — the men were on the front-lines.

Source:

Archives and AI