Takamatsu Air Raid

Takamatsu, capital of Kagawa Prefecture and terminus of the Uko ferry route linking Honshu and Shikoku, was known as the gateway to Shikoku; its population at the 1940 census was about 111,000. From June 1945 XXI Bomber Command, having burned out Tokyo, Osaka and the other major cities, turned its incendiary campaign against medium-sized and smaller cities. On the night of 3-4 July Takamatsu was attacked together with Tokushima and Kochi in Shikoku and Himeji in Hyogo Prefecture.

The Takamatsu air raid was carried out between 2:56 and 4:42 a.m. on 4 July 1945 by 116 B-29s of the 58th Bombardment Wing, XXI Bomber Command. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications record gives 24 tons of high-explosive bombs and 809 tons of incendiaries; Japanese Wikipedia gives a total of 833.1 US tons.

About 3.85 square kilometres, roughly 80 percent of the urban area, was burned. The dead numbered 1,359 (221 of them children under ten), with 1,034 injured and 186 missing; 18,913 buildings were destroyed, of which 18,505 were completely burned and 408 half burned, and about 86,400 people, more than half the population, lost their homes. Among the losses were the Takamatsu Red Cross Hospital, where patients also died, Yonbancho Elementary School and other schools, the Sakura Gate of Takamatsu Castle and the Kotoden urban tram lines.

The city set up a reconstruction body in October 1945 and carried out a war-damage reconstruction programme centred on land readjustment covering about 358.2 hectares, completed in 1970, twenty-five years after the war; Chuo-dori and other main streets date from this period. The victims are commemorated at the Takamatsu war-victims memorial hall (Rokkakudo), built in May 1958, and the adjoining monument, which the ministry lists among memorial sites for civilian war dead. The city's Peace Memorial Museum, now housed in the municipal Takamatsu Miraie complex in Matsushima-cho, preserves records and relics of the raid in sections on the pre-war and wartime years, the air raid, the end of the war and post-war period, and efforts for peace.