March 10, 1945: The Great Tokyo Air Raid (Video)

Part 1: History

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the Great Tokyo Air Raid, in which about 100,000 Japanese civilians were burned to death by a firestorm created by incidendary bombs dropped on residential areas in downtown Tokyo by American planes. The death toll from the March 9-10 bombing exceeded that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was over doubled that of the allied bombing of Dresden. Here is a description of the event from Robert Guillain, a French reporter who was in Tokyo during the attacks:

The inhabitants stayed heroically put as the bombs dropped, faithfully obeying the order that each family defend its own home. But how could they fight the fires with that wind blowing and when a single house might be hit by ten or even more of the bombs, each weighing up to 6.6 pounds, that were raining down by the thousands? As they fell, cylinders scattered a kind of flaming dew that skittered along the roofs, setting fire to everything it splashed and spreading a wash of dancing flames everywhere – the first version of napalm, of dismal fame. The meager defenses of those thousands of amateur firemen – feeble jets of hand-pumped water, wet mats and sand to be thrown on the bombs when one could get close enough to their terrible heat were completely inadequate. Roofs collapsed under the bombs’ impact and within minutes the frail houses of wood and paper were aflame, lighted from the inside like paper lanterns. The hurricane-force wind puffed up great clots of flame and sent burning planks planing through the air to fell people and set fire to what they touched. Flames from a distant cluster of houses would suddenly spring up close at hand, traveling at the speed of a forest fire. Then screaming families abandoned their homes; sometimes the women had already left, carrying their babies and dragging crates or mattresses. Too late: the circle of fire had closed off their street. Sooner or later, everyone was surrounded by fire.

The police were there and so were detachments of helpless firemen who for a while tried to control the fleeing crowds, channeling them toward blackened holes where earlier fires had sometimes carved a passage. In the rare places where the fire hoses worked – water was short and the pressure was low in most of the mains – firemen drenched the racing crowds so that they could get through the barriers of flame. Elsewhere, people soaked themselves in the water barrels that stood in front of each house before setting off again. A litter of obstacles blocked their way; telegraph poles and the overhead trolley wires that formed a dense net around Tokyo fell in tangles across streets. In the dense smoke, where the wind was so hot it seared the lungs, people struggled, then burst into flames where they stood. The fiery air was blown down toward the ground and it was often the refugees’ feet that began burning first: the men’s puttees and the women’s trousers caught fire and ignited the rest of their clothing.

Proper air-raid clothing as recommended by the government to the civilian population consisted of a heavily padded hood over the head and shoulders that was supposed chiefly to protect people’s ears from bomb blasts-explosives, that is. But for months, Tokyo had mostly been fire-bombed. The hoods flamed under the rain of sparks; people who did not burn from the feet up burned from the head down. Mothers who carried their babies strapped to their backs, Japanese style, would discover too late that the padding that enveloped the infant had caught fire. Refugees clutching their packages crowded into the rare clear spaces – crossroads, gardens and parks – but the bundles caught fire even faster than clothing and the throng flamed from the inside.

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Wherever there was a canal, people hurled themselves into the water; in shallow places, people waited, half sunk in noxious muck, mouths just above the surface of the water. Hundreds of them were later found dead; not drowned, but asphyxiated by the burning air and smoke. In other places, the water got so hot that the luckless bathers were simply boiled alive. Some of the canals ran directly into the Sumida; when the tide rose, people huddled in them drowned. In Asakusa and Honjo, people crowded onto the bridges, but the spans were made of steel that gradually heated; human clusters clinging to the white-hot railings finally let go, fell into the water and were carried off on the current. Thousands jammed the parks and gardens that lined both banks of the Sumida. As panic brought ever fresh waves of people pressing into the narrow strips of land, those in front were pushed irresistibly toward the river; whole walls of screaming humanity toppled over and disappeared in the deep water. Thousands of drowned bodies were later recovered from the Sumida estuary.

It was one of the most horrific and devasting attacks on a city in history, and debate over whether the the bombing was justified continues to this day. Was it truly necessary to deliberately target civilians with firebombs? Did burning to death hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians save lives? Robert McNamara, who had worked under Major-General Curtis Lemay during the strategic bombing campaign, gave some thoughts on the morality bombing of Japan in the documentary “Fog of War:”

In McNamara’s opinion, LeMay and himself were attacking as war criminals and would have most likely been prosecuted as such after the war, but because America won the war they were not.

Part 2: The Anniversary

There were several events held in Tokyo today marking the anniversary and remembering those who had died. This news report shows a memorial service in which prayers were offered in the name of the dead:

There was also a peace concert held in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward. Survivors and others sang songs under a gigantic sculpture made of paper cranes symbolizing their wish for peace. There was also a display of over 700 pro-peace messages written by elementary schoolers.

The anniversary was also marked by the protests of a group of survivors who have decided to sue the Japanese government:

Claiming that the state has failed to compensate civilian casualties of the Great Tokyo Air Raid of 1945, victims and their relatives filed suit against the government Friday, demanding a combined 1.23 billion yen in reparations and an apology.
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“The central government rewards former soldiers and their families with military pensions but ignores its duty to aid civilians who were injured or killed in the raid,” said Taketoshi Nakayama, lawyer for the plaintiffs.

By doing so, the government has forced civilians to endure injuries and losses from the war, in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, which states that all people are equal under the law, Nakayama said.

“There were no differences between soldiers and civilians. The government should recognize that all of Japan was a battlefield at the time,” the plaintiffs claim in the suit.

The survivors cannot sue the U.S. government, since Japan waived all rights of its citizens to demand compensation from the U.S. in the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty. If they manage to win their case, it could open the doors for thousands of other survivors of bombings to sue the Japanese government for compensation. It will be interesting to see how this turns out…