Bombing of Yawata (June 1944)

The raid was the first mission against Japan flown under Operation Matterhorn by the U.S. Army Air Forces' XX Bomber Command. The B-29s were based in India and staged through forward airfields around Chengdu in China; their target was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata in northern Kyushu, the largest steel producer in Japan. The command was led by Brig. Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe, and Brig. Gen. LaVerne G. Saunders, commander of the 58th Bombardment Wing, led the mission in person.

Of the 75 B-29s dispatched, 47 bombed the Yawata area over about two hours from 12:38 a.m. on 16 June 1944, dropping 107 tons of bombs. The city was hidden by haze and the blackout; only 15 aircraft aimed visually and the other 32 bombed by radar, and according to English Wikipedia a single bomb landed inside the steel works, which was left virtually undamaged. The Japanese 19th Air Brigade sent up Ki-45 twin-engined fighters of the 4th Air Regiment and others; the defenders claimed several bombers, but only one or two were confirmed shot down by fighters. The Americans lost seven B-29s, mostly to accidents and other causes, with six more damaged, and 57 airmen and one war correspondent were killed. According to Japanese Wikipedia 256 people died in the five cities of northern Kyushu (Yawata 69, Kokura 94, Tobata 53, Moji 34, Wakamatsu 6); the Kokura Army Arsenal was hit and more than 80 people, including mobilised students, were killed there.

Damage was slight, but the raid was the first attack on the home islands by land-based bombers since the Doolittle Raid of April 1942. It showed that Japan's industrial heartland was now within reach, exposed the weakness of Japanese night air defence, and prompted the authorities to strengthen radar warning and press ahead with the evacuation of major cities.

On 20 August 1944, 61 B-29s attacked Yawata again from China, causing hundreds of casualties in Tobata and Yawata. On 8 August 1945 a large incendiary raid from the Mariana Islands burned much of the city; Japanese Wikipedia gives about 14,000 houses destroyed, some 2,500 casualties and 52,562 people affected. In April 2009 a monument to the victims of the June 1944 raid was erected at a temple in Kokura.