TOKYO, JAPAN
MARCH 10, 1945
12:08 A.M.
Annihilation approaches as a hard northwesterly gale lashes Tokyo. An attacking wave of B-29 bombers flies low over the city. The “bikko,” as the Japanese have nicknamed America’s most powerful aircraft, drop a small number of conventional bombs, then make the long turn south toward the Bōsō Peninsula. It has been almost three hours since the first air-raid sirens wailed over the blacked-out city. Tokyo has been largely untouched since the Americans began bombing Japan four months ago, so few citizens have bothered to leave their wood-and-paper homes for the safety of air-raid shelters on this clear and cold night. As the B-29s drone into the distance, the nervous people of Tokyo feel confident enough to settle down to sleep.
Seven minutes later, that confidence is shattered. The mournful yowl of the sirens once again floats over the city. This time, Tokyo’s residents race for concrete shelters, all too aware that a second air-raid siren is confirmation that a brutal bombardment is imminent. The shelters hold just five thousand people, but hundreds of thousands desperately run through the streets—fathers, wives, children, grandparents, pregnant women. Many wear packs strapped to their backs that contain their vital possessions. Worried that they may not make it to the shelters in time, fathers instruct their families to take refuge in any place that offers concealment. They throw their bodies into trenches, canals, and hastily dug holes in the ground. Some gape at the sky, where spotlights sweep back and forth to illuminate the sky for antiaircraft gunners.
The moon is a crescent as the B-29s approach the heavily populated Joto district, home to forty thousand people per square mile. The observant among them realize that the planes are flying thousands of feet lower than usual. American planes typically attack from an altitude of more than five miles high; these B-29s are just a mile above the city.
Inside the American aircraft, an adrenaline rush wipes out the monotony of the long flight to Tokyo; it has been seven hours since the Americans took off from bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Three hundred and thirty-four aircraft of the XXI Bomber Command have flown fifteen hundred miles over open ocean to drop their payloads. To make room for an extra ton of bombs, each plane has been stripped of machine guns and ammunition, leaving these Superfortresses vulnerable to Japanese fighter aircraft. The pilots and navigators were shocked when informed of this decision during their briefing. The order is a calculated gamble on the part of American commander General Curtis LeMay, a thirty-eight-year-old career aviator considered “belligerent” and “brutal” by some, but widely revered for his tactical brilliance. With the deadly battle for Iwo Jima still raging, he believes that crushing the will of the Japanese people is now more important than simply bombing military targets.1
LeMay’s gamble pays off. Few Japanese pilots can be scrambled to confront the air invaders, leaving the B-29s free to drop their ordnance with patient precision. Some Japanese aviators are afraid, unaware that the formidable armada has been stripped of the machine guns that might shoot them down. Harsh winds also give the American bombers an unexpected form of cover, distorting radio and radar signals. The Imperial Japanese Navy picked up the incoming flights more than a thousand miles out to sea, but due to a combination of the winds and a lack of communication between the navy and army, their warnings never make it to the Japanese night fighter squadrons stationed on the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo.
At precisely 1:00 a.m., the bomb bay doors open.
Fourteen minutes later, Tokyo is ablaze.
* * *
It is a holocaust. The B-29s drop special M-69 firebombs from the belly of each fuselage. These are quite different from the atomic fission bombs being developed in Los Alamos, New Mexico, but on this night they are far more deadly.
This firebombing of Tokyo, known as Operation Meetinghouse, is the most horrific bombing in history, far deadlier than the recent Dresden attacks—or any other bombing of the Second World War.2
The use of mass aerial bombardment in World War II forever alters how future conflicts will be waged. The atomic device, which will use elements like uranium in order to create a single explosion of extraordinary intensity, has yet to be tested. The M-69 used on the people of Tokyo is a twenty-inch steel pipe packed with the jellied gasoline known as napalm, which constitutes the Esso Corporation’s most important contribution to the American war effort. The M-69s are bundled into clusters of thirty-eight, which are then loaded inside a finned casing and dropped from the aircraft. Two thousand feet above the ground, the casing opens, releasing the bombs and allowing them to plummet to the earth separately. Nothing happens immediately upon impact, but three seconds later a timed fuse ignites a white phosphorous charge, which forces the napalm to shoot out of the three-inch-wide pipe. Slow-burning and sticky, the napalm affixes itself to clothing, hair, and skin, burning straight down to the bone.
One M-69 is capable of starting a massive fire. One ton of M-69s will ensure complete destruction.
On the morning of March 10, 1945, American B-29 bombers drop two thousand tons of M-69 napalm bombs on Tokyo.
Driven by winds of nearly hurricane force, fire envelops entire city blocks. Mobs of Japanese citizens race for their lives, only to be surrounded by the inferno and summarily asphyxiated as the flames suck all the oxygen from the air. Water mains are destroyed by the blaze, rendering fire hoses useless. Crews armed with water buckets are helpless to stop the carnage. Eighty firefighters and more than five hundred volunteers refuse to leave their posts and burn to death where they stand. Flames destroy ninety-six fire engines. Orange tongues of fire shoot so high from the ground that they reflect off the underbellies of the silver bombers overhead.
As the heat rises, updrafts reach thousands of feet high, actually bringing the smell of burning human flesh into the nostrils of the American pilots. Many planes return to their home base with their fuselages coated in soot.
Soon fire consumes sixteen square miles of Tokyo. The entire geisha district is turned to ash. Hospitals, homes, temples, train stations, bus depots, convents, theaters, fire stations, workers’ hostels, and schools are destroyed. From the safety of the Imperial Palace, which the Americans have specifically chosen not to bomb, Emperor Hirohito beholds a red glow across the horizon, turning darkest night into day.
Trapped inside walls of flame that throw off unimaginably high temperatures, citizens spontaneously burst into flames. Debris flies through the air, striking people dead at random. City canals boil. Dead bodies bob in the icy rivers. Charred corpses litter the ground, many still burning due to body oils. The heat takes its toll on the living as well, melting faces, fingers, and toes. Skin literally peels off bodies, hanging in great flaps from torsos.
At 3:20 a.m. the bombing stops.
As dawn rises over Tokyo, one-fourth of the city has been destroyed. One hundred thousand people are dead; forty thousand people are badly burned but alive. One million Japanese are homeless. Of the 324 B-29s that carried out the bombings, just 12 planes were lost, mainly due to engine failures.
General Curtis LeMay’s stated goal for this mission was that Tokyo be “burned down and wiped off the map to shorten the war.”
Emperor Hirohito tours the burned-out portions of Tokyo on March 18. His caravan of vehicles and his own maroon Rolls-Royce carry the official chrysanthemum crest, signifying that a gyoko—a blessed visitation—is taking place. He comes upon exhausted citizens pawing through rubble, searching for some fragment of their former lives. Upon seeing his vehicles, instead of adopting a subservient stance, the people glare. Hirohito does not stop the cars to engage his subjects, nor does his facial expression display sorrow or regret. Despite the war weariness so evident among Tokyo’s citizens, Japan’s elite will send an emissary to Hirohito two days later, imploring him not to surrender. It is their belief that the Japanese people will become used to the bombings and grow closer together in the process.
In the weeks that follow, Japanese citizens lose sleep, as staying up late to prepare for yet another bombing attack leaves them exhausted and distraught. There is a rise in absenteeism in factories and a slowing of the nation’s war production.
Yet the Japanese still will not surrender. Not even when General LeMay repeats the same firebombing in Nagoya, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Kawasaki.
Instead, schools in Japan close. As a sign that the nation will fight to the bitter end, all children are put to work producing food or munitions; some are even taught how to operate antiaircraft guns.
But that won’t be necessary. After two weeks of “burn jobs,” the firebombing of Japan comes to an end. There are two reasons: First, LeMay’s pilots are exhausted. And second, after dropping five million M-69s on Japan, the XXI Command has run out of firebombs.