Sendai Air Raid Site

The Sendai Air Raid (仙台空襲) of July 10, 1945, was one of the most devastating strategic bombing attacks on a Japanese city during the final months of the Pacific War. Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tohoku region with a wartime population of approximately 300,000, served as the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army's 2nd Division and was a major administrative, educational, and commercial center for northern Honshu.

On the afternoon of July 9, 131 B-29 Superfortress bombers of the USAAF 58th Bombardment Wing took off from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Of these, 123 aircraft reached Sendai airspace shortly after midnight on July 10 at an altitude of roughly 3,000 meters (10,000 feet). Splitting into 25 groups of two to five aircraft each, they carried out a systematic carpet-bombing of the densely packed residential city center over approximately two hours, dropping 12,961 incendiary bombs and cluster munitions totaling 911.3 tons.

The resulting firestorm consumed a five-square-kilometer area of central Sendai — roughly 23% of the built-up city. A total of 11,933 buildings were destroyed by fire, including residences, shops, schools, temples, and government offices. According to the Sendai City Hall wartime survey, casualties included 987 confirmed dead, 50 missing, 260 seriously injured, and 1,423 with minor injuries. A re-examined victim list published in a 1995 citizens' compilation raised the death toll to 1,064, with an additional 335 deaths suspected to be air-raid-related.

Among the irreplaceable cultural losses were the historic structures of Sendai Castle (Aoba Castle), including the Otemon gate and Sumi-Yagura watchtower that had stood since the era of Date Masamune, founder of the Sendai domain. The Zuihoden — the ornate mausoleum of Date Masamune — was also destroyed. The 2nd Division's facilities in the castle's second bailey were damaged, but the army arsenal at Nigatake on the eastern outskirts (the Sendai works of the Tokyo First Army Arsenal) was not attacked in the raid, which targeted the city center.

Postwar reconstruction transformed Sendai's urban landscape. The 1946 War Damage Reconstruction Plan widened streets and created the broad tree-lined boulevards — Aoba-dori, Jozenji-dori, and Hirose-dori — that define modern Sendai and earned it the nickname "City of Trees" (杜の都). Today, the memory of the air raid is preserved through the Sendai City War Reconstruction Memorial Hall, the Bombing Center Point plaque at Chris Road shopping arcade, and annual memorial services held around July 10.