Nagaoka Air Raid Site & Yamamoto Isoroku Memorial Park

On the night of August 1, 1945, the city of Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture became the target of one of the most devastating strategic bombing raids in the final days of World War II. Approximately 125 B-29 Superfortress bombers of the 313th Bombardment Wing struck the city over a period of roughly one hour and forty minutes, beginning at 10:30 PM. They dropped an estimated 163,000 M69 napalm incendiary bombs totaling 925 tons, engulfing the city center in firestorms.

The attack killed 1,488 people according to Nagaoka City's current count (earlier tallies gave 1,486), including some 280 to 300 school-age children, and left the city in ruins. Official estimates place the destruction of the urban area between 65% (per the USAAF's 1953 official history) and 80% (per later Japanese accounts). Nearly 12,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and tens of thousands of residents were left homeless. The primary justification given for targeting Nagaoka was its chemical research laboratory, though local tradition has long attributed the bombing in part to the city being the hometown of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Yamamoto Isoroku (1884–1943) was born into the Takano family in Nagaoka. His family home in the Sakanouemachi district was completely destroyed in the August 1 air raid. After the war, the Yamamoto Isoroku Memorial Park (山本記念公園) was established on the site of his former birthplace. The park features a faithfully reconstructed replica of the Takano family home where Yamamoto was born, and a bronze bust of the admiral, recast in 1948 from the upper part of a statue recovered from the bottom of Lake Kasumigaura.

The air raid on Nagaoka took place just five days before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and nine days before Nagasaki, making it one of the very last conventional bombing raids of the Pacific War. Today the site stands as a powerful reminder of the human cost of strategic bombing and the intertwined fates of military leaders and civilian populations.

The park is located in central Nagaoka, approximately a 10-minute walk from JR Nagaoka Station. Together with the nearby Yamamoto Isoroku Memorial Museum and the Nagaoka War Damage Exhibit Hall (長岡戦災資料館), it forms part of a network of sites preserving the memory of Nagaoka's wartime experience.