Strategic Bombing

This theme covers the air raids by Allied forces — chiefly the U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy carrier aircraft — on cities and industrial targets in the Japanese home islands, and the war-damage remains, memorials and museums found across the country. Targets widened from aircraft plants, naval ports and oil refineries to the built-up areas of large, medium and small cities, making the raids the war most directly experienced by Japanese civilians.

The home islands were first bombed in the Doolittle Raid of April 18, 1942, but strategic bombing proper began in June 1944, when B-29s from Chengdu in China attacked the Yawata Steel Works. After the capture of the Marianas that summer brought Tokyo and other major cities within range, from late 1944 the US Army Air Forces conducted a devastating strategic bombing campaign against Japan, beginning on November 24 with high-altitude precision raids on aircraft plants such as Nakajima's Musashi works. With results limited, from March 1945 B-29 Superfortresses launched from the Mariana Islands carried out low-level night firebombing raids that destroyed large portions of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, and dozens of other cities. The Tokyo raid of March 10 burned out the eastern districts and killed an estimated 100,000 people. Over 60 Japanese cities were significantly damaged. B-29s also mined the Kanmon Strait and harbours, and carrier aircraft and naval gunfire struck coastal factories and transport. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs on August 6 and 9, and raids continued until the early hours of August 15.

Counts of civilian deaths from the raids differ with scope and method; including the atomic bombings they are generally put in the hundreds of thousands. The raids made millions homeless, prompted the evacuation of schoolchildren and the demolition of buildings for firebreaks, and paralysed war production and urban life. The legal and ethical assessment of bombing residential districts is still debated, and demands by Japanese air-raid victims for state compensation long went unanswered in legislation. Japan's own earlier bombing of Chongqing and other Chinese cities is an essential part of the background.

Under this theme visitors will find buildings, bridges and trees bearing bomb or fire scars, air-raid shelters and anti-aircraft gun positions, municipal memorials and peace museums, and the sites of factories that were targets. Most are small and scattered through ordinary neighbourhoods, and on-site panels and museum displays are often needed to understand what happened there.