Former Honjo Army Clothing Depot Site

The Former Honjo Army Clothing Depot Site (旧陸軍被服本廠跡, Kyū Rikugun Hifuku Honshō Ato) in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, marks the location of one of the Imperial Japanese Army's most important logistical installations — and the site of the single deadliest mass casualty event of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.

MILITARY ORIGINS: THE HONJO RICE STOREHOUSE AND ARMY CLOTHING DEPOT

The site's military use dates to the Edo period. In 1734 (Kyōhō 19), the Tokugawa Shogunate established the Honjo Rice Storehouse (本所御蔵, Honjo Okura) on approximately 145,000 square meters of land along the Sumida River, serving as a major granary for the shogunate's rice reserves. After the storehouse was abolished in 1872 (Meiji 5) during the modernization of Japan, the land was transferred to military use.

In 1890 (Meiji 23), the Imperial Japanese Army established the Army Clothing Depot (陸軍被服廠, Rikugun Hifukushō) on the former storehouse grounds in Honjo Ward (now Sumida Ward), under the Army Clothing Depot Regulations (陸軍被服廠條例). The depot was placed directly under the authority of the Army Minister (陸軍大臣) and served as the central institution for the manufacturing, repair, storage, quality inspection, and distribution of all clothing and personal equipment for the Japanese Army.

The depot's production scope was vast: military uniforms (軍服), boots (軍靴), caps (軍帽), cloaks (外套), undergarments, gloves, socks, backpacks, canteens (水筒), blankets (毛布), soap, scissors, and military handbooks. While the depot's own workshops focused primarily on uniform sewing and boot manufacturing, production of many other items was outsourced to private factories, with the depot handling procurement, quality control, warehousing, and distribution.

EXPANSION AND REORGANIZATION

The depot expanded significantly during Japan's successive wars. During the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), demand for military supplies surged, and the Honjo facility operated at maximum capacity. To decentralize production, branch depots were established: the Osaka Branch (大阪支廠) in 1903, and the Hiroshima Branch (広島支廠, later the Hiroshima Army Clothing Depot whose warehouses survive as a National Important Cultural Property) in 1905.

In 1908 (Meiji 41), under revised regulations, the organization was renamed the Army Clothing Depot Headquarters (陸軍被服本廠, Rikugun Hifuku Honshō), with the branch depots correspondingly renamed (Osaka Army Clothing Branch Depot, Hiroshima Army Clothing Branch Depot). By this time, the depot employed thousands of workers, including a significant female workforce engaged in sewing operations.

RELOCATION TO AKABANE (1919)

In 1919 (Taishō 8), the headquarters relocated from Honjo to Akabane (赤羽台) in Ōji Ward (now Kita Ward), consolidating with clothing warehouses that had been established there since 1891. The Honjo site was divided and sold in 1922: the eastern portion to the Ministry of Communications (逓信省, which built telephone exchange facilities) and the western portion to the City of Tokyo for planned park development.

THE GREAT KANTO EARTHQUAKE: FIRE TORNADO OF SEPTEMBER 1, 1923

Construction of the new park had barely begun in July 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake struck on September 1. The massive open space of the former depot grounds appeared to be an ideal evacuation site, and approximately 40,000 residents of the densely packed Honjo neighborhood fled there carrying household belongings, futons, and furniture.

At approximately 4:00 PM, as fires from across the burning city converged on the area, a phenomenon of terrifying destructive power occurred: a fire tornado (火災旋風, kasai senpū) — a vortex of superheated air — swept across the open ground. The refugees' piled belongings provided fuel, and the cyclone of flame, virtually devoid of oxygen, killed nearly everyone present through a combination of burning, heat stroke, and asphyxiation. An estimated 38,000 people perished at this single location — representing roughly one-third of the earthquake's total death toll of approximately 105,000. Only about 2,000 survivors escaped.

The site became the largest mass grave of the earthquake. The remains of 58,000 victims from across the city were eventually gathered and enshrined here when the Earthquake Memorial Hall (震災記念堂, later renamed Tokyo Memorial Hall) was completed in 1930.

THE MARCH 10, 1945 FIREBOMBING OF TOKYO

During World War II, the surrounding Honjo-Fukagawa area of eastern Tokyo — the same densely populated Shitamachi district that had burned in 1923 — was again devastated. On the night of March 9–10, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse sent approximately 334 B-29 Superfortresses to drop 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs (primarily M-69 napalm clusters) on a 31-square-kilometer target area centered on eastern Tokyo. The resulting firestorm killed an estimated 80,000–100,000 civilians in a single night — the deadliest air raid in human history. The former depot grounds, now Yokoamicho Park, lay within the devastated zone, though the reinforced concrete Memorial Hall survived.

After the war, the ashes of approximately 105,400 air raid victims were interred alongside the earthquake dead, and the facility was renamed Tokyo Memorial Hall (東京都慰霊堂) in 1951.

THE SITE TODAY

The former Army Clothing Depot grounds are now occupied by Yokoamicho Park (横網町公園, 20,000 m² — a fraction of the original depot site), NTT Docomo Sumida Building, Sumida Ward Ryogoku Junior High School, Nihon University First Junior and Senior High School, the Dai-ichi Hotel Ryogoku, and part of the Edo-Tokyo Museum complex. No physical structures from the original depot survive; the depot buildings were demolished or removed during the 1919 relocation. However, the open ground of Yokoamicho Park itself preserves the spatial memory of the catastrophe, and multiple monuments within the park mark the site's layered history of military use, earthquake disaster, and wartime destruction.

The site stands as an unparalleled testament to the convergence of Japan's military-industrial development, urban vulnerability to firestorm, and the recurring devastation of Tokyo's Shitamachi districts across the 20th century.