Chiba Air Raids

Chiba was known as a "military town", hosting the Railway First Regiment, the Balloon Regiment, the Army Infantry School, the Army Anti-Aircraft School and other installations, with the Hitachi Aircraft Chiba plant on reclaimed land at Soga. Although the city was hit several times, US forces made it a designated target twice.

On the morning of 10 June 1945, 27 B-29s of the 314th Bomb Wing from Guam dropped 138.2 tons of 500-pound high-explosive bombs aimed at the Hitachi Aircraft plant. Bombs also fell far from the target in the Shinjuku, Fujimi and Shinden districts, destroying the railway engine shed, the women's division of Chiba Normal School and the prefectural girls' high school; 391 people were killed or wounded and 26 hectares were devastated. In the early hours of 7 July, between 01:39 and 03:05, 129 B-29s of the 58th Bomb Wing from Tinian dropped 889.5 tons of incendiary and fragmentation cluster bombs on the urban area. Most of the city centre burned: 205 hectares, 8,489 dwellings, with 1,204 killed or wounded. Chiba Station, the district court, the post office and the army schools were among the facilities destroyed.

According to the city's reconstruction history, the two raids burned about 70% of the central urban area (about 231 hectares), caused 1,595 casualties, damaged 8,904 dwellings and affected 41,212 people. The city commemorates the raids each year around 7 July and maintains an online Digital Peace Museum.