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 tons of 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.
Virtually 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 at the least 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 can 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 revealed 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 beginning,
“held me shut –
“And stood amongst
“The ruins of her dwelling.
“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 battle.”
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. – Footage from Historical past/Common Photographs Group/Getty Photographs
B-29 bombers await orders on the US air base in Guam, in August 1945. – Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs
And now they have been being requested to danger their lives hitting what Bigart known as “a pathetically small metropolis of little apparent significance.”
However in a pre-mission briefing, commanders mentioned Kumagaya had an vital rail yard and outlets that made airplane elements, reliable navy targets.
“This needs to be the ultimate knockout blow of the battle,” commanding officer Col. Carl Storrie informed the fliers, based on 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 they usually might flip again to Guam.
It by no means got here, and late on the evening of August 14, 1945, the final hearth raid of World Struggle II started.
Fireplace and rain
Kazue Hojo was 7 years outdated when Kumagaya burned. She lived in a home along with her household, having a fairly joyful childhood regardless of the hardships introduced on by the truth that her nation had, with its invasion of China, been at battle in Asia for her whole life.
On a June afternoon, she shared images 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 reminiscences of the fireplace 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 severe 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 vibrant like daytime,” Hojo mentioned.
World Struggle II Kumagaya firebombing survivor Kazue Hojo, 87, and Shoichi Yoshida, administrator for a neighborhood 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
“All people 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 might 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 might 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’ dwelling 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 battle.
A father’s want, a son’s dilemma
It’s a brutally sizzling June afternoon once we start our go to to discover Kumagaya, now with a inhabitants of virtually 200,000 and simply over an hour by rail from Tokyo. On the practice 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 outdoors 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 wood statue of Kobodaishi — considered one of historical Japan’s most revered Buddhist monks — a sacred image of non secular legacy and devotion. The left aspect of the statue’s easy, cherubic face is blackened by hearth.
Okayasu defined how this was considered one 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 battle, his father stashed the statue away. Close to the daddy’s dying, 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 dwelling 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 mustn’t see him like this,” his father instructed.
The son has saved 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 harm 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 schooling program. It confirmed proof of the horror of battle and what it had executed to Kumagaya lengthy earlier than their births, he mentioned.
The statue labored, and the youngsters who visited it requested questions — some have been delivered to tears — and commenced to know their heritage higher, the museum director informed Okayasu.
“Whereas I really feel dangerous going in opposition to my father’s will, I’ve determined that if individuals are to find out about peace, they’ll see the statue,” Okayasu mentioned, his voice trembling in a whisper.
Nonetheless, he doesn’t show it continually. 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 outdated when Kumagaya was bombed, defined its significance to him.
The 200 or so sq. toes 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 battle 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 fireplace raids have been the brainchild of Gen. Curtis LeMay. He’d been given command of the US bomber pressure within the Pacific after earlier B-29 raids, utilizing high-explosive bombs dropped from 30,000 toes, have been ineffective at crippling the Japanese battle 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 a lot of these concerned within the battle effort.
The B-29s would go in low, at 5,000 to eight,000 toes. They’d go in at evening. And they’d go in single file, moderately than within the giant multi-layered formations the US had used within the daylight bombing of German forces in Europe.
And so they’d carry incendiary bombs, cluster munitions dropped in cannisters of 38 apiece that broke aside close to impression, spreading their bomblets of napalm over a large space.
LeMay thought they’d be excellent to burn Japan’s wood houses and companies, and he was shortly confirmed proper.
Main Common Curtis LeMay, head of the bomber command in opposition to Japan, stands in entrance of a bunch of B-29 bombers at a base within the Mariana Islands. – Corbis Historic/Getty Photographs
This map of Japan exhibits the principal cities hit by US hearth bomb assaults. Figures on the map point out what share of the town was destroyed and supply a US metropolis of approximate dimension for comparability. – US Nationwide Archives
A March 9-10 hearth 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 fireplace 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 battle.’ LeMay mentioned, ‘If we’d misplaced the battle, we’d all have been prosecuted as battle criminals.’ And I believe he’s proper. He, and I’d say I, have been behaving as battle criminals. LeMay acknowledged that what he was doing can be thought immoral if his aspect had misplaced. However what makes it immoral in case you lose and never immoral in case you win?”
Who’s in charge?
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 likelihood,” Ooi mentioned.
If the give up had been introduced sooner, or if peace negotiations had began later, it will’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 someday earlier that the battle 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 battle at Guam cries after listening to Emperor Hirohito announce Japan’s unconditional give up, on August 15, 1945. – Corbis Historic/Getty Photographs
US Common 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 battle.
“As soon as it reaches that time, widespread sense and conscience can not resist it,” Yoshida mentioned, including that Imperial Japan’s system of governance left no checks or restraints on the ability of the navy.
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 hundreds of ladies.
The go to gave her a brand new perspective on her metropolis’s destiny, she mentioned.
“In Japan, the main target is on the harm Japan suffered in the course of the battle, however I used to be shocked to be taught concerning the Nanjing Bloodbath — part of historical past the place Japan was the perpetrator.”
Hojo and Yoneda flip their ideas to the Individuals 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 hearth 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 approach, too,” Hojo mentioned.
“Meaning even the US navy 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 trade of letters with a Kumagaya survivor, Ken Arai, Lock gave an airman’s perspective on the raid.
“I’ve all the time regretted all of the harmless individuals killed, injured and the lack of dwelling 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 battle had ended.”
Yoneda mentioned the state of affairs was actually past the management of anybody instantly concerned that evening.
“I’m not going to say Kumagaya needed to occur,” she mentioned.
“But when battle begins, it’s exhausting to finish.”
Scarred at age 3, he grows symbols of peace
A brief stroll from the temple is a stream mattress, contemporary 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 a few of the tons of 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 slender and the buildings on its banks have been manufactured from wooden, the burning buildings 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 identified Kumagaya victims inscribed on its base.
Susumu Fujino lived close to that spot in August 1945. He was 3 years outdated on the time, and shrapnel from a US bomb hit him within the shoulder.
Eighty years later, he nonetheless lives there and is outdoors tending to his backyard as Yoshida exhibits us the realm.
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 Fireplace Raid.”
A neighbor factors to the scar on 83-year-old Susumu Fujino’s shoulder that he acquired 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 hearth bombing of Kumagaya. – Brad Lendon/CNN
That evening and the scars of battle are one thing Fujino didn’t discuss 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 at the moment are thought-about symbols of peace for Kumagaya.
The fireplace raid left the flowers vulnerable to extinction, Fujino mentioned.
“Kumagaiso vegetation 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, only a few hundred toes from the stream the place so many died.
For those who go
Kumagaya is usually a aspect day journey in case you’re visiting Tokyo and wish one thing totally different to do off the standard vacationer tracks.
Many of the websites associated to the Kumagaya hearth raid are a brief bus or taxi experience — 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 normal rail traces.
If you wish to go to the Sekijoji Temple and see the burned statue, you’ll want to 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 practice station, has a historical past of the realm and consists of an exhibit on the fireplace raid. There’s not a lot data in English, nonetheless.
The stream close to the middle of the bombing assault is a number of blocks north of the station and in case you stroll alongside it to the west, you’ll see the statue commemorating the victims of the fireplace 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 shall be studying her poems.
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