Remembering The Firebombing Of Tokyo

Makeshift housing built from galvanized iron roofing of burned buildings stand amid destruction and rubble in Tokyo, Japan on Sept. 7, 1945. With the exception of the concrete downtown buildings in the background, a great part of the residential districts have been razed by incendiary and other strikes by the U.S. The Tokyo firebombing has long been overshadowed by the subsequent U.S. atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki preceding the Japanese surrender that ended World War II. But the burning of the capital stands as a horrifying landmark in the brutal history of warfare on noncombatants. (Frank Filan/AP)
From NPR (Opens in new window)

Most of us will know the names of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden, and what those names mean in the history of World War II and the devastation those cities suffered. But the most deadly single night of World War II was somewhere else.

It was 70 years ago this week that 334 U.S. B-29 bombers dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo’s crowded wooden neighborhoods. Those bombs started a firestorm that burned at more than 1,000 degrees and killed more than 100,000 people.

It’s an event that dwarfs even the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but it’s been all but forgotten around the world and even in Japan, as the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports.

Note: This BBC interview can be heard in the Here & Now podcast or with the WBUR app.

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