Eighty years later, the scars of the final American firebombing of a Japanese metropolis stay — on the pores and skin of a person who nonetheless lives mere yards from the place a whole lot died, on the floor of a statue of a revered Buddhist monk, and within the minds of these whose metropolis was turned to ash in a matter of hours.
Nearly 90 US B-29 bombers dropped about 6,000 tons of jellied gasoline — napalm — on Kumagaya, Japan, on the evening of August 14-15, 1945. The ensuing fires, burning at 800 to 1,200 levels Celsius, killed no less than 260 individuals, injured 3,000 and left, by some estimates, virtually 75% of the town of 47,000 in ruins.
The final within the string of US warplanes that created that firestorm left the skies over Kumagaya lower than 12 hours earlier than the voice of Emperor Hirohito could be broadcast asserting Japan’s unconditional give up.
Present Kumagaya resident Kazumi Yoneda got here into the world that day, not lengthy earlier than the US bombers struck. In 2020, she printed a e book of poetry, “The Day I Was Born,” and he or she shared it with CNN. One learn:
“The day I used to be born, flames devoured the town.
“My mom gave start,
“held me shut –
“And stood amongst
“The ruins of her residence.
“Her physique gave no mom’s milk
“She held her ever-crying little one in her arms.”
Ready for “Utah”
“Nobody desires to die within the closing moments of a conflict.”
These phrases got here from New York Herald Tribune correspondent Homer Bigart, who was on board one of many final B-29s to strike Kumagaya.
He flew from the Pacific island of Guam within the Superfortress Metropolis of Saco, a part of the 314th Bombardment Wing.
It was a mission US commanders have been at pains to justify to the aircrews, Bigart wrote.
The second atomic bomb assault, on Nagasaki, had occurred simply 5 days earlier, killing virtually 46,000 individuals. Three days earlier than that, on August 6, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed an estimated 70,000 individuals immediately.
Japan’s capitulation was anticipated, and US bomber crews hadn’t flown for 5 days — “an uneasy truce,” Bigart wrote.
B-29 bombers fly over Mount Fuji en path to bomb Tokyo in 1945. – Photos from Historical past/Common Photos Group/Getty Photos
B-29 bombers await orders on the US air base in Guam, in August 1945. – Hulton Archive/Getty Photos
And now they have been being requested to threat their lives hitting what Bigart referred to as “a pathetically small metropolis of little apparent significance.”
However in a pre-mission briefing, commanders mentioned Kumagaya had an necessary rail yard and outlets that made airplane elements, respectable army targets.
“This must be the ultimate knockout blow of the conflict,” commanding officer Col. Carl Storrie informed the fliers, in keeping with Bigart. “Put your bombs on the goal in order that tomorrow the world may have peace.”
And in case the give up was introduced throughout their flight to Kumagaya, the B-29 crews have been informed to watch their radios for the phrase “Utah.” That may imply Japan’s give up was official and so they may flip again to Guam.
It by no means got here, and late on the evening of August 14, 1945, the final fireplace raid of World Struggle II started.
Hearth and rain
Kazue Hojo was 7 years previous when Kumagaya burned. She lived in a home along with her household, having a fairly comfortable childhood regardless of the hardships introduced on by the truth that her nation had, with its invasion of China, been at conflict in Asia for her whole life.
On a June afternoon, she shared photographs of that childhood with CNN. As we sit down in the home of Shoichi Yoshida, non-executive administrative director of a civic group that retains recollections of the hearth raid alive, it’s the primary time she has spoken with media about her recollections of that fiery evening.
Because the bombing started, she fled along with her mom, her 5-year-old sister and 2-month-old brother to a railway embankment, dodging the incendiary bombs that “got here down like rain,” she mentioned.
A bit of shrapnel struck her mom within the neck. On the similar time, her brother, whom her mom carried on her again, suffered a critical burn on his brow. Each of them have been left with scars they’d bear the remainder of their lives, she mentioned.
And fires raged. “It was shiny like daytime,” Hojo mentioned.
World Struggle II Kumagaya firebombing survivor Kazue Hojo, 87, and Shoichi Yoshida, administrator for an area civic group dedicated to preserving the historical past of the bombing, find her home on a map of the town from 1945. – Miki Lendon/CNN
“Everyone appeared moist,” she mentioned, however she didn’t know why. Was it rainfall? Was it the napalm, was it a mix of each, because the fires may generally trigger localized rainfall?
What Hojo does bear in mind vividly is what she noticed when she got here down into the town the morning after the raid.
Her home nonetheless stood — on the very fringe of the destruction. Past it, she may see for miles, distances unimaginable the day earlier than, with smoke nonetheless rising from what a day earlier was Kumagaya.
The following day, as she and her household walked by means of the ruins, hoping to get to her grandparents’ residence about six miles away, it was moist, very moist.
All alongside the route, by means of the town’s burned downtown district, many adults have been mendacity on the bottom amid the rubble, crying inconsolably, which she says is her most painful reminiscence of the conflict.
A father’s want, a son’s dilemma
It’s a brutally scorching June afternoon once we start our go to to discover Kumagaya, now with a inhabitants of just about 200,000 and simply over an hour by rail from Tokyo. On the prepare station, a memento T-shirt espouses the town’s fashionable declare to fame: the most popular temperature ever recorded in Japan — 41.1 levels Celsius (105.98 levels Fahrenheit) on July 23, 2018.
From there, Yoshida takes us on the six-minute drive to the Sekijoji Buddhist temple, the place exterior a Japanese elm tree has grown new wooden round that which was charred on the evening of August 14, 1945.
Tetsuya Okayasu, head priest of the Sekijoji Buddhist temple in Kumagaya, Japan, exhibits a gate roof below which he and 6 different members of his household lived for six months following the US firebombing of Kumagaya, Japan, on the final evening of World Struggle II. – Brad Lendon/CNN
Inside, 79-year-old head priest Tetsuya Okayasu introduces us to a picket statue of Kobodaishi — one in every of historical Japan’s most revered Buddhist monks — a sacred image of religious legacy and devotion. The left aspect of the statue’s clean, cherubic face is blackened by fireplace.
Okayasu defined how this was one in every of seven sacred statues within the temple, and it was the final one contained in the construction because it burned from the American bombs. His father risked his life to get it out, he mentioned, actually because the construction crumbled round him.
After the conflict, his father stashed the statue away. Close to the daddy’s demise, as he handed management to his son, he informed him his two needs for the statue:
One, it ought to by no means be repaired.
“The statue is a residing witness to the air raid on Kumagaya,” Okayasu mentioned his father informed him.
And two, it ought to by no means be proven to the general public. “As a result of it’s heartbreaking in look, individuals shouldn’t see him like this,” his father instructed.
The son has stored the primary promise and held to the second for years, till the director of the close by Saitama peace museum requested to show the statue. Okayasu relented.
A statue of a revered Buddhist monk exhibits injury on its left aspect from the firebombing of Kumagaya, Japan. – Brad Lendon/CNN
The primary members of the general public to see it have been younger individuals on the museum’s summer season peace training program. It confirmed proof of the horror of conflict and what it had carried out to Kumagaya lengthy earlier than their births, he mentioned.
The statue labored, and the kids who visited it requested questions — some have been dropped at tears — and commenced to know their heritage higher, the museum director informed Okayasu.
“Whereas I really feel dangerous going towards my father’s will, I’ve determined that if persons are to study peace, they will see the statue,” Okayasu mentioned, his voice trembling in a whisper.
Nonetheless, he doesn’t show it always. However he’ll carry it out for these with an curiosity, as he did for CNN.
Exterior the temple, Okayasu factors out a gate with a slim tiled roof. It’s the one a part of the complicated that stood after the bombing.
Okayasu, who was 10 days previous when Kumagaya was bombed, defined its significance to him.
The 200 or so sq. ft below that gate roof, with makeshift partitions of burned corrugated iron, have been shelter for him, his mom and father, 4 siblings and grandmother, for six months as they waited for post-war housing to be constructed.
A weapon or a conflict crime?
Kumagaya, together with close by Isesaki, have been the final cities to burn from US firebombs, however have been simply the ultimate blows in a marketing campaign that started in February 1945.
The hearth raids have been the brainchild of Gen. Curtis LeMay. He’d been given command of the US bomber power within the Pacific after earlier B-29 raids, utilizing high-explosive bombs dropped from 30,000 ft, have been ineffective at crippling the Japanese conflict machine.
As few as 20% of targets have been hit in these early raids, and air crews blamed poor visibility in dangerous climate and jet stream winds blowing bombs off beam after being dropped from excessive altitude.
LeMay’s plan shocked lots of these concerned within the conflict effort.
The B-29s would go in low, at 5,000 to eight,000 ft. They’d go in at evening. And they might go in single file, quite than within the giant multi-layered formations the US had used within the daylight bombing of German forces in Europe.
They usually’d carry incendiary bombs, cluster munitions dropped in cannisters of 38 apiece that broke aside close to influence, spreading their bomblets of napalm over a large space.
LeMay thought they’d be excellent to burn Japan’s picket properties and companies, and he was rapidly confirmed proper.
Main Normal Curtis LeMay, head of the bomber command towards Japan, stands in entrance of a bunch of B-29 bombers at a base within the Mariana Islands. – Corbis Historic/Getty Photos
This map of Japan exhibits the principal cities hit by US fireplace bomb assaults. Figures on the map point out what share of the town was destroyed and supply a US metropolis of approximate measurement for comparability. – US Nationwide Archives
A March 9-10 fireplace raid on the capital of Tokyo killed 100,000 individuals, the deadliest air raid in human historical past, a toll worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It — and subsequent raids — destroyed about 60% of the town, leaving about 1,000,000 individuals homeless.
The worst-hit metropolis was Toyama — 99% destroyed — on August 1.
Robert McNamara, who was US protection secretary throughout a lot of the Vietnam Struggle, was a Guam-based analyst of bombing effectiveness in 1945.
The hearth raids, McNamara mentioned within the 2003 documentary “The Fog of Struggle,” confirmed humanity “has not likely grappled with what are, I’ll name it, ‘the principles of conflict.’ LeMay mentioned, ‘If we’d misplaced the conflict, we’d all have been prosecuted as conflict criminals.’ And I believe he’s proper. He, and I’d say I, have been behaving as conflict criminals. LeMay acknowledged that what he was doing could be thought immoral if his aspect had misplaced. However what makes it immoral if you happen to lose and never immoral if you happen to win?”
Who’s accountable?
Although it was dozens of US B-29s that burned Kumagaya in 1945, the survivors and others in Kumagaya mentioned they maintain no animosity towards America.
Norihiro Ooi, curator on the Kumagaya Metropolis Library, mentioned Kumagaya was actually simply unfortunate, dangerous timing.
“The explanation Kumagaya grew to become the positioning of the final air raid was just by probability,” Ooi mentioned.
If the give up had been introduced sooner, or if peace negotiations had began later, it might’ve been someplace else, he mentioned.
“One place needed to be the final bombed,” he mentioned.
That’s little comfort to Hojo, the 87-year-old survivor.
“If it was simply at some point earlier that the conflict ended,” she mentioned. “The very subsequent day Japan was defeated. Kumagaya’s tragedy feels completely silly in that mild.”
Some individuals blame the Imperial Japanese authorities. Its invasion of China starting in 1931 set the stage for World Struggle II within the Pacific and the destruction that may finally be meted out by the US and its allies, they mentioned.
A Japanese prisoner of conflict at Guam cries after listening to Emperor Hirohito announce Japan’s unconditional give up, on August 15, 1945. – Corbis Historic/Getty Photos
US Normal Douglas MacArthur meets with Japan’s Emperor Hirohito on the US ambassador’s residence in Tokyo on September 27, 1945, following Japan’s give up. – Kyodo/Reuters
The years of battle introduced a momentum of conflict.
“As soon as it reaches that time, frequent sense and conscience can now not resist it,” Yoshida mentioned, including that Imperial Japan’s system of governance left no checks or restraints on the facility of the army.
Poet creator Yoneda talked about, as an grownup, visiting Nanjing, China, the place from December 1937 to February 1938 Imperial Japanese troops massacred greater than 300,000 individuals, together with Chinese language troops and civilians and raped tens of 1000’s of girls.
The go to gave her a brand new perspective on her metropolis’s destiny, she mentioned.
“In Japan, the main focus is on the injury Japan suffered in the course of the conflict, however I used to be shocked to study in regards to the Nanjing Bloodbath — part of historical past the place Japan was the perpetrator.”
Hojo and Yoneda flip their ideas to the People who have been in these B-29s.
Kazumi Yoneda, 80, was born the day World Struggle II ended and the day US B-29 bombers rained fireplace on her hometown, the town of Kumagaya, Japan. – Brad Lendon/CNN
“The human coronary heart is complicated — we endured horrible struggling, however those that inflicted it will need to have suffered in their very own means, too,” Hojo mentioned.
“Meaning even the US army had hesitations, doesn’t it?” Yoneda asks.
Vivian Lock was the pilot of the second-to-last B-29 to hit Kumagaya that evening.
In a 2004 alternate of letters with a Kumagaya survivor, Ken Arai, Lock gave an airman’s perspective on the raid.
“I’ve at all times regretted all of the harmless individuals killed, injured and the lack of residence and property,” wrote Lock, who died in 2010.
In his correspondence, he famous how on the flight to Japan B-29 crews have been keen to listen to the code phrase that Japan had surrendered — “Utah.”
Greater than as soon as, radio silence between his plane and others on the mission was damaged with the phrases, “Have you ever heard something but?” Lock wrote. “That means that they have been hoping the conflict had ended.”
Yoneda mentioned the state of affairs was actually past the management of anybody immediately concerned that evening.
“I’m not going to say Kumagaya needed to occur,” she mentioned.
“But when conflict begins, it’s arduous to finish.”
Scarred at age 3, he grows symbols of peace
A brief stroll from the temple is a stream mattress, recent water gurgling by means of the guts of Kumagaya for a number of blocks. It’s arrow-straight now, however in 1945 it was a meandering creek – and a grave for among the a whole lot of people that died that evening.
They jumped into the streambed, hoping to keep away from the flames and warmth. However as a result of the stream was slim and the buildings on its banks have been made from wooden, the burning constructions collapsed on them.
A statue to the victims of the 1945 bombing of Kumagaya sits by a stream, close to a spot the place dozens died from the US air assault. – Brad Lendon/CNN
Now, a statue marks that spot, the names of the recognized Kumagaya victims inscribed on its base.
Susumu Fujino lived close to that spot in August 1945. He was 3 years previous on the time, and shrapnel from a US bomb hit him within the shoulder.
Eighty years later, he nonetheless lives there and is exterior tending to his backyard as Yoshida exhibits us the world.
Fujino removes his shirt and exhibits us the scar from the evening of the bombing that continues to be with him. Behind him, a poster advertises upcoming native commemorations of “The Final Hearth Raid.”
A neighbor factors to the scar on 83-year-old Susumu Fujino’s shoulder that he obtained as a toddler when hit by shrapnel in the course of the US firebombing of Kumagaya. – Brad Lendon/CNN
Susumu Fujino exhibits flower varieties he’s rising within the backyard on the positioning of 1945 fireplace bombing of Kumagaya. – Brad Lendon/CNN
That evening and the scars of conflict are one thing Fujino didn’t speak about for many of his life, he mentioned.
However, at 83, he’s speaking now as he and the opposite survivors come to the top of their lives.
Fujino now makes use of his retirement years to develop the Kumagaiso, an orchid, and Kumagai Tsubaki, a camellia flower. Each are actually thought-about symbols of peace for Kumagaya.
The hearth raid left the flowers vulnerable to extinction, Fujino mentioned.
“Kumagaiso crops have been virtually fully worn out. That’s why I’ve been rising them — I need to protect them. To me, they’re symbols of peace.”
His personal peace backyard, just some hundred ft from the stream the place so many died.
In case you go
Kumagaya could be a aspect day journey if you happen to’re visiting Tokyo and need one thing completely different to do off the standard vacationer tracks.
Many of the websites associated to the Kumagaya fireplace raid are a brief bus or taxi trip — or perhaps a stroll — from Kumagaya Station, which is accessible from Tokyo Station by Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains in round 40 minutes or solely an hour and quarter-hour when utilizing customary rail traces.
If you wish to go to the Sekijoji Temple and see the burned statue, you should definitely contact the temple beforehand to allow them to get it prepared for viewing.
A small museum on the second flooring of the Kumagaya Metropolis Library, a brief stroll south from the prepare station, has a historical past of the world and consists of an exhibit on the hearth raid. There’s not a lot data in English, nevertheless.
The stream close to the middle of the bombing assault is a couple of blocks north of the station and if you happen to stroll alongside it to the west, you’ll see the statue commemorating the victims of the hearth raid.
From August 13 to 18, you possibly can go to a peace exhibition, “The Final Air Raid on Kumagaya,” at Yagihashi Division Retailer within the metropolis, co-hosted by the Kumagaya Air Raid Memorial Civic Group. Yoneda will likely be studying her poems.
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