News Tokyo air raid anniversary

On the 79th anniversary of a tragic event, Tokyo residents commemorated the devastating US air raid that occurred during World War Two. In the predawn hours of 10 March 1945, approximately 100,000 people lost their lives in this catastrophic attack. The destruction caused by US B-29 bombers was concentrated in the city's eastern residential areas. Last Saturday, around 200 individuals gathered to offer prayers for the victims at a memorial hall in Tokyo's Sumida Ward. Among those present were Crown Prince and Princess Akishino, Tokyo Governor Koike, and the victims' families. The solemn service served as a poignant reminder of the human cost of war.

Shizuko Nishio started shaking and sank to her knees as she watched TV news footage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That was two years ago. One scene, of a Ukrainian girl weeping in an underground shelter, evoked the sense of terror that Nishio felt as a small child during the Great Tokyo Air Raid of 1945. Even today, 79 years later, Nishio is not over it. "How come? I am over there," Nishio, who lives in Tokyo, said she thought about the footage of the girl. Nishio, 85, spent decades trying to erase mental images of her experience as a 6-year-old, but the footage from Ukraine brought home the fact her efforts had been in vain. The 300 or so B-29 bombers deployed for the Great Tokyo Air Raid dropped 330,000 incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo on March 10, a few months before Japan's surrender in World War II. The attack claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 civilians.

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Some Tokyo municipalities will show the accounts of survivors of the 1945 Great Tokyo Air Raid.

The recordings are part of a current public exhibition that is now touring Tokyo in time for the 79th anniversary of the deadly attack, which occurred on March 10, 1945. They were originally to be part of a museum proposed by an expert panel 30 years ago to memorialize the deadly night fire bombing raid, which turned Tokyo into an inferno and killed about 100,000 people. But dissension over how to refer to Japan's wartime aggression as part of the exhibition led to the proposed museum being dropped during the 1990s. Following the freezing of the project, the recorded recollections were long relegated to a warehouse. But the collection of survivors' stories was eventually made available to the public through a limited-time display on Feb. 28.

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A Tokyo Peace Memorial Museum had been in the planning for over 30 years but never materialised.

The survivor story collection was initially among the items to be displayed at a peace memorial museum proposed by then Tokyo Governor Shunichi Suzuki. The basic plan developed in 1994 would utilize images and replica models to illustrate the devastation caused by the Great Tokyo Air Raid along with the effects on victims' lives. People's daily lives during and after the war, historical events in the Cold War during the postwar period, the history of the nuclear arms race and a range of topics covering war and peace, as well as bombing damage, would be detailed at the museum. [...] However, members of the metropolitan assembly who belonged to the Liberal Democratic Party and the now-dissolved Democratic Party of Japan criticized the plan. One politician called it "inappropriate to put too much emphasis on the aggression side of Japan." Another complaint was that the "exhibition is characterized by a certain historical viewpoint that disrespects our homeland."

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I thought this was going to be the Dolittle raid, but google tells me that was in April.

But so much changed between these two. Dolittle's planes targeted military and industrial targets, and didn't cause all that much injury or damage.

Three years later, the US fire bombs Tokyo and kills as many people as the later Hiroshima bomb. It was a massive number of planes and bombs in comparison, but I wonder what would have unfolded if Dolittle had used incendiaries and the goal at that early point had instead been to burn as much of the city as possible.

Curtis LeMay was the architect/instigator of the program of incendiary bombing and leveling of Japanese cities. Tho he wasn't instrumental in it, it wasn't too long after the start of the Korean War that the complete destruction of cities became the defacto strategy.

Interestingly, this about Robert McNamara: "One of his major responsibilities was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness, especially the B-29 forces commanded by Major General Curtis LeMay in India, China, and the Mariana Islands.[13]" He would later go on to champion the escalation of the Vietnam War, along with 'Rolling Thunder', the bombing of North Vietnam.

The Doolittle raid comprised a dozen or so B-25s and caused little damage, the raid on 10 March 1945 surpassed the nightmare of Dresden by a multiple. I think there is a memorial park in Tokyo's Sumida Ward.