Bombing of Tokyo (1945): The Operation Meetinghouse Firestorm

The bombing of Tokyo on the night of 9–10 March 1945, code-named Operation Meetinghouse, was an American incendiary raid that burned out much of eastern Tokyo. Around 280 B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped napalm-filled bombs on densely built wooden neighbourhoods, killing an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 or more people in a single night.

It is generally regarded as the deadliest single air raid in history, more destructive in its immediate effects than the atomic bombings that followed five months later. The raid marked a turning point in the American air war against Japan, from attempted precision bombing to the systematic burning of cities.

Background

American bombing of the Japanese home islands began in earnest in November 1944, after US forces captured Saipan, Tinian and Guam in the Mariana Islands. From there the new long-range B-29 bomber could reach Tokyo, about 2,400 kilometres away. Apart from the Doolittle Raid of 1942, Tokyo had not previously been seriously attacked.

The first months of the campaign were disappointing. High-altitude daylight raids against aircraft factories were thrown off by cloud and by the jet stream, a band of very fast winds over Japan that scattered bombs. In January 1945 General Henry H. Arnold replaced the commander of XXI Bomber Command, Haywood Hansell, with Major General Curtis LeMay, who had led bomber units over Europe.

American planners had long known that Japanese cities, with their wooden houses and small workshops scattered among homes, were highly vulnerable to fire. Tests had been run on mock Japanese houses in the United States, and a smaller incendiary raid on Tokyo on 25 February had already destroyed a large area.

The plan

LeMay made a radical change. Instead of flying high by day in formation, the B-29s would attack individually at night from low altitude, between about 1,500 and 2,700 metres. Most defensive guns and gunners were removed to carry more bombs. The bombers carried mainly M-69 incendiaries, small cluster bombs filled with napalm, a jellied petrol that sticks and burns fiercely.

The target was a zone of eastern Tokyo known as Shitamachi, the old low-lying city east and west of the Sumida River, including the wards of Asakusa, Honjo and Fukagawa. It was one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, with perhaps over 40,000 people per square kilometre in places. Planners justified the choice by the many small workshops producing parts for war industries among the homes.

The raid

On the evening of 9 March, 334 B-29s took off from the Marianas, and about 279 reached Tokyo. Pathfinder aircraft began marking the target shortly after midnight on 10 March, dropping incendiaries in a large X pattern. The main force followed over the next two to three hours, releasing around 1,665 tons of bombs.

A strong, dry wind was blowing that night. The fires quickly joined into a sweeping conflagration that crossed canals and firebreaks. People fled towards rivers, parks and concrete buildings, but many were caught by the flames, killed by heat and smoke, or drowned in canals and the Sumida. Tokyo’s fire brigades, poorly equipped for a disaster of this scale, could do little.

Japanese anti-aircraft fire and fighters shot down or caused the loss of 14 B-29s. By dawn, about 41 square kilometres of the city had burned, and the glow had been visible from far away.

Official Japanese figures recorded around 83,000 to 84,000 dead, but many historians consider the true number to be higher, and some Japanese estimates exceed 100,000. Around 40,000 or more people were injured. About 267,000 buildings were destroyed and over a million people lost their homes.

The scale of the death toll reflected both the bombing method and the conditions on the ground: crowded wooden housing, inadequate shelters, the wind, and the fact that civilians were expected to stay and fight fires rather than evacuate.

Civil defence and survivors

Japan’s civil defence system was built around neighbourhood associations, known as tonarigumi, which organised fire drills, bucket brigades and simple dug-out shelters. Under the Air Defence Law, first passed in 1937 and tightened in 1941, residents were expected to remain in their homes during raids and put out incendiary fires rather than flee. Against hundreds of tons of napalm spread by strong winds, these measures were hopeless, and the obligation to stay may have added to the death toll.

Many schoolchildren had been evacuated to the countryside from 1944, but large numbers of families, older people and workers remained. Survivors described streets turned into tunnels of fire, crowds crushed on bridges, and people who sought safety in the Sumida River or in canals dying of cold, smoke or drowning.

One survivor, the writer Katsumoto Saotome, spent decades collecting testimony and helped found the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, which opened in 2002. Such efforts preserved thousands of personal accounts of the night.

Key people

Curtis LeMay commanded XXI Bomber Command and designed the low-level night tactics. He later argued that the raids shortened the war and saved lives, while accepting that they killed many civilians.

Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, pressed for results from the expensive B-29 programme and supported the change of approach. Emperor Hirohito toured the devastated districts on 18 March, one of his rare public appearances among bombed areas.

Consequences

The success of the raid, from the American point of view, led to a campaign of fire raids against Japan’s major cities. Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe were struck within days, and Tokyo was raided again several times, most heavily on 25–26 May. By August 1945 more than 60 Japanese cities had been badly burned, and hundreds of thousands of civilians had been killed.

Despite the destruction, the Japanese government did not surrender. The war ended only after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet entry into the war, leading to the surrender of Japan in August and September 1945.

Legacy and debate

The firebombing of Tokyo receives far less attention outside Japan than the atomic bombings or the bombing of Dresden. Historians continue to debate whether it was a legitimate attack on dispersed war industry or a deliberate assault on civilians. LeMay himself later reportedly remarked that he would have been prosecuted as a war criminal had the United States lost.

In 1964 the Japanese government awarded LeMay the Order of the Rising Sun for his role in building up Japan’s post-war air force, a decision that caused controversy in Japan. Survivors’ groups have long sought official recognition and compensation, which Japanese courts have so far denied.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1942, 18 April: The Doolittle Raid makes the first American attack on Tokyo.
• 1944, 24 November: First B-29 raid on Tokyo from the Mariana Islands.
• 1945, 20 January: Curtis LeMay takes command of XXI Bomber Command.
• 1945, 25 February: A large incendiary raid burns part of Tokyo.
• 1945, 9 March: 334 B-29s take off from Guam, Saipan and Tinian.
• 1945, 10 March: The raid burns about 41 square kilometres of eastern Tokyo.
• 1945, 18 March: Emperor Hirohito tours the destroyed districts.
• 1945, 25–26 May: Another heavy fire raid strikes central Tokyo.

Why it matters

The Tokyo raid of March 1945 killed more people in a few hours than any other air attack in history. It changed how the United States fought the Pacific War, set the pattern for the destruction of Japan’s cities, and remains central to debates about the bombing of civilians in modern warfare.