Shizuoka Air Raid Site

The Bombing of Shizuoka (静岡大空襲, Shizuoka Dai-kūshū) was one of the most devastating strategic bombing raids on a Japanese regional city during World War II. On the night of June 19, 1945, 137 B-29 Superfortress bombers of the USAAF 314th Bombardment Wing launched a massive firebombing attack against the central part of Shizuoka City.

The bombers attacked in two carefully coordinated waves from the east and west, a tactic designed to trap the civilian population between the mountains to the north and the sea to the south. Over approximately three hours, the aircraft dropped 13,211 incendiary bombs, igniting a firestorm that consumed the densely built wooden city center. Civil defense measures in Shizuoka were woefully inadequate — the city had almost no antiaircraft batteries, and air raid shelters consisted merely of shallow holes in the ground next to wooden houses, covered with thin wooden roofs topped with soil and clay, made shallow by the high groundwater table.

The results were catastrophic: 66.1% of the city was totally destroyed, 1,952 civilians were killed according to the most widely cited count (a city memorial inscription gives 1,669 for this raid), the number of injured is given as more than 5,000 in Japanese police records and about 12,000 in American accounts, and between 26,891 and more than 30,000 homes were reduced to ashes. Two B-29 bombers collided mid-air during the operation, killing 23 American aircrew members.

Shizuoka was selected as a target primarily because it was the 15th largest city in Japan according to the 1940 census, with an estimated wartime population of 212,000. The city sat astride the vital Tokaido Main Line railway connecting Tokyo with Osaka and served as a major regional commercial center. Prior tactical raids with high-explosive bombs had targeted a defunct Mitsubishi aircraft engine plant in the area during March through June 1945.

Today, a joint Japanese-American memorial service is held annually around June 19 at the peak of Shizuhatayama (賤機山), where a memorial was established in 1970 by a local monk. The ceremony honors both the civilian victims and the 23 American airmen who died when their B-29s collided. A War Victims Memorial Stone (戦争犠牲者追悼碑) was erected on August 15, 1995 — the 50th anniversary of the war's end — commemorating both the approximately 2,000 air raid victims and the roughly 7,900 Shizuoka military personnel who perished in the war.