Bombing of Tokyo
Bombing of Tokyo | |||||||
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Part of the air raids on Japan during the Pacific War | |||||||
Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault, 26 May 1945. | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
United States | Japan |
The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū) was a series of
The
Over half of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut the city's output in half.[3] Some modern post-war analysts have called the raid a war crime due to the targeting of civilian infrastructure and the ensuing mass loss of civilian life.[4][5]
Doolittle Raid
The first raid on Tokyo was the
B-29 raids
The key development for the bombing of Japan was the
The initial raids were carried out by the
The first such raid was against Kobe on 4 February 1945. Tokyo was hit by incendiaries on 25 February 1945 when 174 B-29s flew a high altitude raid during daylight hours and destroyed around 643 acres (260 ha) (2.6 km2) of the snow-covered city, using 453.7 tons of mostly incendiaries with some fragmentation bombs.[14] After this raid, LeMay ordered the B-29 bombers to attack again but at a relatively low altitude of 5,000 to 9,000 ft (1,500 to 2,700 m) and at night, because Japan's anti-aircraft artillery defenses were weakest in this altitude range, and the fighter defenses were ineffective at night. LeMay ordered all defensive guns but the tail gun removed from the B-29s so that the aircraft would be lighter and use less fuel.[15]
Operation Meetinghouse
On the night of 9–10 March 1945,
The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II,
Results
Damage to Tokyo's heavy industry was slight until firebombing destroyed much of the light industry that was used as an integral source for small machine parts. Firebombing also killed or made homeless many workers. According to the victorious US report, over 50% of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut the whole city's output in half.[3] The destruction and damage were especially severe in the eastern areas of the city. The districts bombed were home to 1.2 million people. Tokyo police recorded 267,171 buildings destroyed, which left more than one million people homeless.[26]
Emperor Hirohito's tour of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945 was the beginning of his involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender six months later.[27]
Casualty estimates
The
The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to be arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors' accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile (400 inhabitants/ha) and peak levels as high as 135,000 inhabitants per square mile (520 inhabitants/ha), the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.[28]
In his 1968 book, reprinted in 1990, historian Gabriel Kolko cited a figure of 125,000 deaths.[30] Elise K. Tipton, professor of Japan studies, arrived at a rough range of 75,000 to 200,000 deaths.[31] Donald L. Miller, citing Knox Burger, stated that there were "at least 100,000" Japanese deaths and "about one million" injured.[32]
The entire bombing campaign against Japan killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, mostly civilians.[33][34]
Postwar recovery
After the war, Tokyo struggled to rebuild. In 1945 and 1946, the city received a share of the national reconstruction budget roughly proportional to its amount of bombing damage (26.6%), but in successive years Tokyo saw its share dwindle. By 1949, Tokyo was given only 10.9% of the budget; at the same time there was runaway inflation devaluing the money. Occupation authorities such as Joseph Dodge stepped in and drastically cut back on Japanese government rebuilding programs, focusing instead on simply improving roads and transportation. Tokyo did not experience fast economic growth until the 1950s.[35]
Memorials
Between 1948 and 1951 the ashes of 105,400 people killed in the attacks on Tokyo were interred in
After the war, Japanese author Katsumoto Saotome, a survivor of the 10 March 1945 firebombing, helped start a library about the raid in Koto Ward called the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. The library contains documents and literature about the raid plus survivor accounts collected by Saotome and the Association to Record the Tokyo Air Raid.[39]
Postwar Japanese politics
In 2007, 112 members of the Association for the Bereaved Families of the Victims of the Tokyo Air Raids brought a class action against the Japanese government, demanding an apology and 1.232 billion yen in compensation. Their suit charged that the Japanese government invited the raid by failing to end the war earlier, and then failed to help the civilian victims of the raids while providing considerable support to former military personnel and their families.[40] The plaintiffs' case was dismissed at the first judgement in December 2009, and their appeal was rejected.[41] The plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected their case in May 2013.[42]
In 2013, during Japanese Prime Minister
Partial list of missions
B-29
- 24 November 1944: 111 B-29s hit an aircraft factory on the rim of the city.[45]
- 27 November 1944: 81 B-29s hit the dock and urban area and 13 targets of opportunity.[46]
- 29–30 November 1944: two incendiary raids on industrial areas, burning 2,773 structures.[46]
- 19 February 1945: 119 B-29s hit port and urban area.
- 24 February 1945: 229 B-29s plus over 1600 carrier-based planes.[47]
- 25 February 1945: 174 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy 28,000 buildings.[48]
- 4 March 1945: 159 B-29s hit urban area.[49]
- 10 March 1945: 334 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy 267,000 buildings; 25% of city[49] (Operation Meetinghouse) killing some 100,000.
- 2 April 1945: 100 B-29s bomb the Nakajima aircraft factory.[50]
- 3 April 1945: 68 B-29s bomb the Koizumi aircraft factory and urban areas in Tokyo.[50]
- 7 April 1945: 101 B-29s bomb the Nakajima aircraft factory again[50]
- 13 April 1945: 327 B-29s bomb the arsenal area.[51]
- 20 July 1945: 1 B-29 drops a Pumpkin bomb (bomb with same ballistics as the Fat Man nuclear bomb) through overcast. It was aimed at, but missed, the Imperial Palace.[52]
- 8 August 1945: 60 B-29s bomb the aircraft factory and arsenal.
- 10 August 1945: 70 B-29s bomb the arsenal complex.[53]
Other
16–17 February 1945: carrier-based aircraft, including dive bombers, escorted by Hellcat fighters attacked Tokyo. Over two days, over 1,500 American planes and hundreds of Japanese planes were in the air. "By the end of 17 February, more than five hundred Japanese planes, both on the ground and in the air, had been lost, and Japan's aircraft works had been badly hit. The Americans lost eighty planes."[54]
18 August 1945: The last U.S. air combat casualty of World War II occurred during mission 230 A-8, when two
See also
References
- ^ a b Long, Tony (9 March 2011). "March 9, 1945: Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy". Wired.
1945: In the single deadliest air raid of World War II, 330 American B-29s rain incendiary bombs on Tokyo, touching off a firestorm that kills upwards of 100,000 people, burns a quarter of the city to the ground, and leaves a million homeless.
- ^ Craven, Wesley Frank, and James Lea Cate, eds. The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume Five, the Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki June 1944 to August 1945. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, page 558.
- ^ a b United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War), p. 18.
- ^ Rauch, Jonathan. "Firebombs Over Tokyo: America's 1945 attack on Japan's capital remains undeservedly obscure alongside Hiroshima and Nagasaki". The Atlantic. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^ Carney, Matthew (8 March 2015). "Tokyo WWII firebombing, the single most deadly bombing raid in history, remembered 70 years on". ABC Australia. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^ Shapiro 2009, p. 115.
- ^ Ray 2003, p. 126.
- ^ "Official Website of The Doolittle Raiders". Archived from the original on 30 November 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
- ^ Beevor 2012, p. 698.
- ^ Video: B-29s Rule Jap Skies,1944/12/18 (1944). Universal Newsreel. 1944. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
- ^ Morgan & Powers 2001, p. 279.
- ^ Plung, Dylan (15 April 2018). "The Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Ground: An Unexamined Context to the Firebombing of Japan". Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 16 (8).
- ^ Hopkins 2009, p. 322.
- ^ Bradley 1999, p. 33.
- ^ Miller & Commager 2001, pp. 447–449.
- ^ Crane, Conrad C. "The War: Firebombing (Germany & Japan)". PBS. Archived from the original on 2 June 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
- ^ Bradley 1999, pp. 34–35.
- ^ Rodden, Robert M.; John, Floyd I.; Laurino, Richard. "Exploratory Analysis of Firestorms" (PDF). Stanford Research Institute (May 1965). Office of Civil Defense, Department of the Army, Washington D.C.: 39, 40, 53–54. Archived from the original on 8 October 2012.
- ^ Dyson., Freeman (1 November 2006), "Part I: A Failure of Intelligence", Technology Review, MIT, archived from the original on 2 March 2012, retrieved 9 March 2008
- ^ McNeill, David (10 March 2005). "The night hell fell from the sky'". Japan Focus. Archived from the original on 5 December 2008.
- ^ Morgan & Powers 2001, p. 314.
- ^ "9 March 1945: Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy". Wired. Condé Nast Digital. 9 March 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- ^ Technical Sergeant Steven Wilson (25 February 2010). "This month in history: The firebombing of Dresden". Ellsworth Air Force Base. United States Air Force. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- ^ Vance, Laurence M. (14 August 2009). "Bombings Worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima". The Future of Freedom Foundation. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- ^ Coleman, Joseph (10 March 2005). "1945 Tokyo Firebombing Left Legacy of Terror, Pain". CommonDreams.org. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 3 January 2015. Retrieved 8 August 2011.
- ^ Sherry 1987, pp. 276–277.
- ^ Bradley 1999, p. 38.
- ^ a b Selden, Mark (2 May 2007). "A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq". Japan Focus. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
- ^ Rhodes 1984, p. 599.
- ^ Kolko 1990, pp. 539–540.
- ^ Tipton 2002, p. 141.
- ^ Miller & Commager 2001, p. 456.
- ^ Crane 1993, p. 140.
- ^ Conway-Lanz 2006, p. 1.
- ^ Sorensen 2004.
- ^ Karacas 2010, pp. 521–523
- ^ "慰霊供養の方 東京空襲犠牲者名簿 登載受付" [Receptionist for registering Tokyo Air Raid Victim List]. 都立横網町公園 ( Yokoamichō Park ) (in Japanese). Retrieved 5 June 2021.
- ^ "東京空襲犠牲者名簿" [Bureau of Citizens and Cultural Affairs, Tokyo Metropolitan Government]. 東京都生活文化局 (in Japanese). 15 January 2013. Retrieved 7 June 2021.
- Japan Times, 20 March 2012, p. 12.
- ^ "東京大空襲、国を提訴 遺族ら12億円賠償請求". 47NEWS. Kyodo News. 9 March 2007. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ "東京大空襲の賠償認めず 「救済対象者の選別困難」". 47NEWS. Kyodo News. 14 December 2009. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ "東京大空襲で原告敗訴が確定 最高裁が上告退ける". 47NEWS. Kyodo News. 9 May 2013. Archived from the original on 11 June 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ "Japanese government says 1945 Tokyo bombing was 'against humanitarian principles'". Japan Daily News. Mainichi Shimbun. 7 May 2013. Archived from the original on 9 August 2015. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ "東京大空襲で答弁書 「人道主義に合致せず」". 47NEWS. 共同通信社. 7 May 2013. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
- ^ Hillenbrand 2010, pp. 261–262.
- ^ a b Hillenbrand 2010, p. 263.
- ^ Hillenbrand 2010, p. 274.
- ^ Tactical Mission Report 38. 21st Bomber Command. 1945.
- ^ a b U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II: Combat Chronology. March 1945. Archived 2 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine Air Force Historical Studies Office. Retrieved 3 March 2009.
- ^ a b c Sloggett 2013, p. 154.
- ^ Dorr 2012.
- ^ Polmar 2004, p. 24.
- ^ "American missions against Tokyo and Tokyo Bay". Pacific Wrecks. Archived from the original on 5 October 2023. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
- ^ Hillenbrand 2010, pp. 273–274.
- ^ The Last to Die | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine. Airspacemag.com. Retrieved on 5 August 2010.
- ^ 1942 USAAF Serial Numbers (42-91974 to 42-110188). Joebaugher.com. Retrieved on 5 August 2010.
Bibliography
- Beevor, Antony (2012). The Second World War. New York: Back Bay Books. ISBN 978-0-316-02375-7.
- Bradley, F.J. (1999). No Strategic Targets Left. Turner Publishing. ISBN 9781563114830.
- Conway-Lanz, Sahr (2006). Collateral Damage: Atrocities, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-97829-7.
- Crane, Conrad C. (1993). Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II. Lawrence,KS: University of Kansas Press.
- Dorr, Robert F. (20 December 2012). B-29 Superfortress Units of World War 2. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78200-835-4.
- Hillenbrand, Laura (2010). Unbroken. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6416-8.
- Hopkins, William B. (2009). The Pacific War: The Strategy, Politics, and Players That Won the War. Zenith Imprint. ISBN 978-0-7603-3435-5.
- Karacas, Cary (2010). "Place, Public Memory and the Tokyo Air Raids". The Geographical Review. 100 (4): 521–537. S2CID 153372067.
- Kolko, Gabriel (1990) [1968]. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. pp. 539–40. ISBN 9780679727576.
- Miller, Donald L.; Commager, Henry Steele (2001). The Story of World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 447–449. ISBN 9780743227186.
- Morgan, Robert; Powers, Ron (2001). The Man Who Flew The Memphis Belle: Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94610-1.
- Polmar, Norman (2004). The Enola Gay: The B-29 That Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Potomac Books. ISBN 1-57488-836-6.
- Ray, Dr. John (2003). The Illustrated History of WWII. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
- Rhodes, Richard (1984). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. ISBN 0-684-81378-5.
- Shapiro, Isaac (2009). Edokko: Growing Up a Foreigner in Wartime Japan. iUniverse. ISBN 978-1-4401-4124-9.
- Sherry, Michael S. (1987). The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 276–77. ISBN 0-415-97829-7.
- Sloggett, David (18 July 2013). A Century of Air Power: The Changing Face of Warfare 1912–2012. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-78159-192-5.
- Sorensen, Andre (2004). The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century. RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-415-35422-6.
- Tipton, Elise K. (2002). Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. Routledge. ISBN 0-585-45322-5.
Further reading
- Caidin, Martin (1960). A Torch to the Enemy: The Fire Raid on Tokyo. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-553-29926-3. D767.25.T6 C35.
- Coffey, Thomas M. (1987). Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay. Random House Value Publishing. ISBN 0-517-55188-8.
- Crane, Conrad C. (1994). The cigar that brought the fire wind: Curtis LeMay and the strategic bombing of Japan. JGSDF-U.S. Army Military History Exchange. ASIN B0006PGEIQ.
- ISBN 0-14-100146-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8027-1565-4.
- Greer, Ron (2005). Fire from the Sky: A Diary Over Japan. Jacksonville, Arkansas: Greer Publishing. ISBN 0-9768712-0-3.
- Guillian, Robert (1982). I Saw Tokyo Burning: An Eyewitness Narrative from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. Jove Pubns. ISBN 0-86721-223-3.
- Hoyt, Edwin P. (2000). Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, March 9 – August 15, 1945. Madison Books. ISBN 1-56833-149-5.
- Jablonski, Edward (1971). "Air War Against Japan". Airwar Outraged Skies/Wings of Fire. An Illustrated history of Air power in the Second World War. Doubleday. ASIN B000NGPMSQ.
- Lemay, Curtis E.; Bill Yenne (1988). Superfortress: The Story of the B-29 and American Air Power. McGraw-Hill Companies. ISBN 0-07-037164-4.
- McGowen, Tom (2001). Air Raid!: The Bombing Campaign. Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books. ISBN 0-7613-1810-0.
- Shannon, Donald H. (1976). United States air strategy and doctrine as employed in the strategic bombing of Japan. U.S. Air University, Air War College. ASIN B0006WCQ86.
- Smith, Jim; Malcolm Mcconnell (2002). The Last Mission: The Secret History of World War II's Final Battle. Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-0778-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4165-8440-7.
- Werrell, Kenneth P. (1998). Blankets of Fire. Smithsonian. ISBN 1-56098-871-1.
External links
- 67 Japanese cities firebombed in World War II.
- Army Air Forces in World War II.
- The Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages / Introduction.
- Barrell, Tony (1997). "Tokyo's Burning". ABC Online. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 3 August 1997. Retrieved 3 November 2006. Transcript of a radio documentary/commentary on the Tokyo firebombing with excerpts from interviews with participants and witnesses.
- Craven, Wesley Frank; James Lea Cate. "Vol. V: The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945". The Army Air Forces in World War II. U.S. Office of Air Force History. Retrieved 12 December 2006.
- Hansell, Jr., Haywood S. (1986). "The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan: A Memoir". Project Warrior Studies. U.S. Office of Air Force History. Retrieved 12 December 2006.