Tokyo Fire Raids - 63 Years Later
On the evening on March 9th and into March 10, 1945 the United States sent 334 B-29’s into Tokyo to drop over 450,000 fire bombs on the Sumida District in Tokyo. The resulting firestorm devastated almost 17 square miles of the city and approximately 100,000 people were killed as a result of the fire raid. Many more were injured or maimed as a result.
The History Learning Site has a detailed account of the historical fire raids and the events that led up to it. They also provide this quote from someone who lived through the event:
“Stacked up corpses were being hauled away on lorries. Everywhere there was the stench of the dead and of smoke. I saw the places on the pavement where people had been roasted to death. At last I comprehended first-hand what an air-raid meant. I turned back, sick and scared. Later I learned that 40% of Tokyo was burned that night, that there had been 100,000 casualties and 375,000 left homeless.”
“A month after the March raid, while I was on a visit to Honjo on a particularly beautiful cherry-blossom day, I saw bloated and charred corpses surfacing in the Sumida River. I felt nauseated and even more scared than before.”
“We ourselves were burned out in the fire raid of May 25th 1945. As I ran I kept my eyes on the sky. It was like a fireworks display as the incendiaries exploded. People were aflame, rolling and writhing in agony, screaming piteously for help, but beyond all mortal assistance.”
Fusako Sasaki
Eye Witness to History provides another detailed account of the event from the perspective of a French reporter.
Yesterday an peace mural was dedicated at the Sumida City ward office (city hall) with the theme “Peace — Let’s bring it to the world and to space.” A mural has been created annually to commemorate this event since 1992. This years mural consists of over 150,000 paper cranes combined form an image of a crane flying into space from the Earth. A photo of the mural can be seen in an article by the Mainichi Daily News.
I wanted to blog about this and was trying to put into context my feelings about this event so that I could add to the discussion rather than just report it. Of course I am horrified by the loss of life and can’t imagine living through something like this but I am not knowledgeable enough about the war to pass judgement on whether or not the fire raids were justified.
Japan Probe has posted a piece on the anniversary that includes some video from the time and it is generating some interesting discussion in the comments sections. It’s worth a read as this is obviously still a very touchy subject. I believe that the commemoration of the anniversary is warranted even if it only serves to remind those of us that didn’t live through the time what happened so that we never go down that road again.
