Aichi Aircraft Funakata Plant (Atsuta Air Raid Site)

The Funakata Plant (船方工場) in Atsuta-ku, Nagoya was the original aircraft manufacturing facility of Aichi Tokei Denki K.K. (愛知時計電機), established in 1922 with the company headquarters relocating there the following year. The plant produced a succession of important Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft, including the Type 99 carrier dive bomber (D3A, "Val") that led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Zero-type reconnaissance floatplane (E13A, "Jake").

By 1943, when the aircraft division was spun off as the independent Aichi Kokuki K.K., the Funakata Plant continued as a secondary airframe factory while primary assembly shifted to the larger Eitoku Plant. However, Funakata remained a critical production node.

On June 9, 1945, the Funakata factory complex became the target of one of the war's most devastating precision air raids. B-29 Superfortresses delivered a concentrated bombardment that destroyed the entire factory in approximately 10 minutes. Casualty figures differ by source: one account gives 1,145 Aichi Aircraft employees killed and approximately 3,000 injured (another gives 1,045 dead), while the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications records 2,068 dead and 1,944 injured for the raid as a whole, including the adjacent Aichi Tokei Denki parent company facility — the heaviest human toll of any air raid on Nagoya. Many victims were mobilized students (学徒動員) — teenagers conscripted from schools to work in war production — whose complex organizational records made identification of remains extremely difficult.

Today, the former parent company Aichi Tokei Denki (愛知時計電機) still has its head office and main plant in the Funakata (Chitose) district, continuing the industrial lineage. In front of its main gate stands a memorial Jizo statue (慰霊地蔵尊), its inscription recording the approximately 10-minute bombing that claimed so many lives. Along the nearby Horikawa Canal, a section of bomb-damaged embankment wall (被爆護岸壁) was preserved and relocated in 1996 during riverside improvements, accompanied by a memorial marker. A martyrs' grave (殉職者之墓) at Heiwa Park Cemetery commemorates the company employees who perished.