Hachioji Air Raid

Hachioji, a textile town and rail junction west of Tokyo, had become a source of labour and housing for the munitions plants around Sagamihara and a reception area for evacuees; an underground Nakajima Aircraft factory was under construction at nearby Asakawa. Leaflets warning of a raid were dropped on the night of 31 July and during the day on 1 August 1945. An alert sounded at 20:20 on 1 August but was lifted around 22:00 when the bombers were reported heading for Kawasaki and Tsurumi.

At about 00:45 on 2 August the attack began without warning. Some 169 B-29s bombed in waves for nearly two hours, dropping about 1,600 tons of incendiaries, a density comparable to the 10 March Tokyo raid given the far smaller target area. About 80% of the urban area was burned and neighbouring villages were also hit. Toyama, Nagaoka and Mito were attacked the same night.

The death toll is given differently by source: the city history cited by the government records 396 dead and more than 2,000 injured, of whom 494 seriously, while other accounts give about 445 dead. Roughly 14,000 houses were destroyed and some 70,000 people were affected. A memorial tower erected in Fujimori Park in October 1965 enshrines 265 victims.