Kobe Air Raids

Kobe, one of Japan's principal ports and a centre of shipbuilding and heavy industry, was raided repeatedly from early 1945; Japanese sources count 128 raids up to the end of the war. The first area incendiary attack on the city took place on 4 February 1945.

In the early hours of 17 March 1945, following the fire raids on Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, a large B-29 force (331 aircraft according to English-language accounts) burned out the western half of the city, centred on Hyogo, Hayashida and Fukiai wards. On 11 May an aircraft factory in present-day Higashinada Ward was the target of a precision bombing attack. On 5 June a still larger force (about 530 B-29s according to English-language accounts) bombed an area stretching from Tarumi in the west to Nishinomiya in the east, reducing the remaining eastern half of Kobe to ashes.

For the present city area the recorded losses are 141,983 houses damaged, 530,858 people affected, 7,491 dead and 17,002 injured; the MIC page notes that these figures are not definitive and that the real losses were probably greater, and other counts exceed 8,000 dead. The City of Kobe maintains the online 'Kobe Disaster and War Damage Archive' documenting the raids.