1/28/2024 0 Comments Tokyo aerial viewCurtis LeMay, commander of the US bombers in the Pacific. The horrors Nihei saw that night were the result of Operation Meetinghouse, the deadliest of a series of firebombing air raids on Tokyo by the United States Army Air Forces, between February and May 1945. And while the Allied bombing of Dresden in Germany in February 1945 roused a strong public debate on the tactic of unleashing fire on civilian populations, on its 75th anniversary the impact and legacy of the Japan air raids remain largely unknown.Īn aerial view of Tokyo after it was razed by American fire bombing carried out on March 10, 1945. The human toll that night exceeded that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that year, where the initial blasts killed about 70,000 people and 46,000 people respectively, according to the US Department of Energy.īut despite the sheer destruction of the Tokyo air raids, unlike for Hiroshima or Nagasaki, there is no publicly funded museum in Japan’s capital today to officially commemorate March 10. And, by some estimates, a million people were left homeless. The inferno the bombs created reduced an area of 15.8 square miles to ash. Photo/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesĪs many as 100,000 Japanese people were killed and another million injured, most of them civilians, when more than 300 American B-29 bombers dropped 1,500 tons of firebombs on the Japanese capital that night. Time Life Pictures/Wartime Japanese Govt. Japanese government photo shows buildings aflame after World War II firebomb raid. It was the early morning of March 10, 1945, and Nihei had just survived the deadliest bombing raid in human history. After falling to the ground, they’d both been shielded from the fire by the charred corpses that were now at their ankles. The stranger who had protected her was her father. When Nihei was finally pulled out from the pile of people, she saw their bodies charred black. We must live.” Eventually, the voices became weaker. As more people piled into the intersection, she was pushed to the ground.Īs she drifted in and out of consciousness beneath the crush, she remembers hearing muffled voices above: “We are Japanese. A stranger wrapped himself around her to protect her from the flames. At that moment, he was swept away into the crush of people trying to escape.Īs the flames closed in, Nihei found herself at a Tokyo crossroad, screaming for her father. She briefly let go of her father’s hand to toss it off. Nihei had been asleep when the bombs began raining down on Tokyo, then a city comprised of mostly wooden houses, prompting her to flee the home she shared with her parents, her older brother and her younger sister.Īs she raced down her street, the superheated winds set her fireproof wrap ablaze. “The flames consumed them, turning them into balls of fire,” says Nihei, now 83. Everywhere she turned, 8-year-old Haruyo Nihei saw flames.īombs dropped by the Americans had created tornadoes of fire so intense that they were sucking mattresses from homes and hurling them down the street along with furniture – and people.
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