On this day, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history.
Early on March 9, Air Force crews met on the Mariana Islands of Tinian and Saipan for a military briefing. They were planning a low-level bombing attack on Tokyo that would begin that evening, but with a twist: Their planes would be stripped of all guns except for the tail turret. The decrease in weight would increase the speed of each Superfortress bomber—and would also increase its bomb load capacity by 65 percent, making each plane able to carry more than seven tons.
Speed would be crucial, and the crews were warned that if they were shot down, all haste was to be made for the water, which would increase their chances of being picked up by American rescue crews. Should they land within Japanese territory, they could only expect the very worst treatment by civilians, as the mission that night was going to entail the deaths of tens of thousands of those very same civilians. “You’re going to deliver the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen,” said U.S. Gen. Curtis LeMay.
The cluster bombing of the downtown Tokyo suburb of Shitamachi had been approved only a few hours earlier. Shitamachi was composed of roughly 750,000 people living in cramped quarters in wooden-frame buildings. Setting ablaze this “paper city” was a kind of experiment in the effects of firebombing; it would also destroy the light industries, called “shadow factories,” that produced prefabricated war materials destined for Japanese aircraft factories.
The denizens of Shitamachi never had a chance of defending themselves. Their fire brigades were hopelessly undermanned, poorly trained, and poorly equipped. At 5:34 p.m., Superfortress B-29 bombers took off from Saipan and Tinian, reaching their target at 12:15 a.m. on March 10. Three hundred and thirty-four bombers, flying at a mere 500 feet, dropped their loads, creating a giant bonfire fanned by 30-knot winds that helped raze Shitamachi and spread the flames throughout Tokyo.
Masses of panicked and terrified Japanese civilians scrambled to escape the inferno, most unsuccessfully. The human carnage was so great that the blood-red mists and stench of burning flesh that wafted up sickened the bomber pilots, forcing them to grab oxygen masks to keep from vomiting.
The raid lasted slightly longer than three hours. “In the black Sumida River, countless bodies were floating, clothed bodies, naked bodies, all black as charcoal. It was unreal,” recorded one doctor at the scene. Only 243 American airmen were lost—considered acceptable losses.
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LeMay and fellow Luciferian Robert McNamara admitted while planning the attack that if the u.s. lost the war they would be hauled before a war crimes tribunal for this genocide. And don’t give me that stupid shit about Pearl Harbor. If slaughtering civilians is just recompense for military attacks then all we Muricans deserve to see our children set afire.
Tough shit.
It was a war. A real one to the death, not the bullshit conflicts you’ve been watching most of your life. If you think for a second that had the Japanese had the opportunity to do the same to us, they would have passed, than just retire to your fucking safe spot and pray to Heaven you can live out your life as a idiot.
I bet you believe it was preferable for us to have a million casualties invading Japan instead of nuking Hiroshima? Tell that to all of my uncles and father who forever thanked God above and Harry Truman for saving their lives.
The documentary about McNamara, “Fog of War” is quite sobering. Tokyo was just the tip of the iceberg.
A war crime of epic proportion.
No such thing as a war crime. War is politics and last time I checked there is no rule book….except as retroactively applied by the victors to the losers once hostilities are ended. In the upcoming American, Civil War II expect no quarter to be asked or given.
It’s human nature.
In the 3rd Punic War Rome put Carthage under siege for years and finally overwhelmed those remaining alive. Those not slaughtered were sold into slavery. Then they burned the city to the ground and destroyed the walls.
The reason? They needed more food for Rome. That was over 2,000 years ago.
The purpose of a war is to kill people and break their things. Japanese people, perhaps you should have thought of this BEFORE YOU STARTED THE FREAKIN’ WAR, YA THINK?!?!?!
All you had to do was surrender.
If there hadn’t been a Pearl Harbor then there wouldn’t have been Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo, and that atomic bomb saved my uncle’s life as he was scheduled to be in the first wave onto Japanese shores.
War is Hell, and we should be grateful it is, lest we grow too fond of it, Grant said. And he was right. When a Nation goes to war it should have exhausted all other options, and it should pursue the most vigorous course to end the conflict by the quickest means possible. Firebombstorms, a poor mans nuke, was an acceptable means to quicker surrender to avoid greater casualties than if the US had to invade mainland Japan, for both US and Japanese lives. Hard decisions call for hard men and save lives. The Japs started the War and bombings with Pearl Harbor, and we ended it with attacks like this to break their will to fight and end the war. Dont be surprised when our own government starts doing it here to its own subjects. Get ready, there is nothing new under the Sun, as Ecclesiastes says, its coming here.