Tokushima Air Raid

Tokushima lies at the mouth of the Yoshino River in eastern Shikoku, commanding the approach from the Kii Channel to the Inland Sea. According to Japanese Wikipedia, American planners regarded it as a food-supply base for Kobe and Osaka, and the city also contained war-related plants such as Shikishima Spinning and Kawasaki Aircraft. Between 1 June and 24 July 1945 the city was bombed by B-29s on seven occasions, of which the attack before dawn on 4 July, known as the Great Tokushima Air Raid, was by far the largest.

The raid took place between 1:24 and 3:19 a.m. on 4 July 1945, lasting one hour and fifty-five minutes. Of 141 B-29s of the 314th Bombardment Wing dispatched from the Marianas on the afternoon of 3 July, 129 bombed the city, dropping 1,050.8 tons of incendiaries (403.8 tons of oil-type and 647.0 tons of thermite-magnesium-type bombs). Takamatsu was attacked the same night. Residents fled to Mount Bizan and the banks of the Yoshino River.

About 62 percent of the city was burned; the American damage assessment recorded 74 percent of a 1.7-square-mile (about 4.4 square kilometre) built-up area destroyed. Approximately 1,000 people were killed (431 men, 553 women and 17 of unknown sex) and about 2,000 injured; 17,183 households and 70,295 people were affected. The Washi-no-mon gate of Tokushima Castle, Tokushima Station and most of the city's temples and shrines were lost, and the factories named above were forced to stop work. Because the ordinary crematoria could not cope, many of the dead were cremated on the riverbank; the prefecture and city held a joint memorial service at a temple in the city on 2 September 1945.

A memorial tower to the war-damage victims was erected on 4 July 1955, the tenth anniversary of the raid, at the East Ninomaru of the Tokushima Castle site, where bereaved families hold a memorial service every 4 July. The Washi-no-mon gate was rebuilt after the war and now stands at the entrance to Tokushima Central Park.