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A USAAF reconnaissance photograph of Tokyo taken on 10 March 1945. Part of the area destroyed by the raid is visible at the bottom of the image. The raid lasted for approximately two hours and forty minutes. [84] Visibility over Tokyo decreased over the course of the raid due to the extensive smoke over the city.
The districts bombed were home to 1.2 million people. Tokyo police recorded 267,171 buildings destroyed, which left more than one million people homeless. [26] Emperor Hirohito's tour of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945 was the beginning of his involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender six months later. [27]
By the end of these raids just over half (50.8 percent) of Tokyo had been destroyed and the city was removed from XXI Bomber Command's target list. [137] The Command's last major raid of May was a daylight incendiary attack on Yokohama on 29 May conducted by 517 B-29s escorted by 101 P-51s.
The Allied submarine campaign and the mining of Japanese coastal waters had largely destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet. With few natural resources, Japan was dependent on raw materials, particularly oil, imported from Manchuria and other parts of the East Asian mainland, and from the conquered territory in the Dutch East Indies . [ 4 ]
The bombing of Tokyo in 1944 and 1945 is estimated to have killed between 75,000 and 200,000 civilians and left more than half of the city destroyed. [55] The deadliest night of the war came on March 9–10, 1945, the night of the American "Operation Meetinghouse" raid. [56]
The history of Tokyo, Japan's capital prefecture and largest city, starts with archeological remains in the area dating back around 5,000 years. Tokyo's oldest temple is possibly Sensō-ji in Asakusa, founded in 628. The city's original name, Edo, first appears in the 12th century.
The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage (東京大空襲・戦災資料センター, Tōkyō Daikūshū Sensai Shiryō Sentā) is a museum in Tokyo, Japan that presents information and artifacts related to the bombing of Tokyo during World War II. The museum opened in 2002 and was renovated in 2005, the 60th anniversary of the bombings. [1]
The firebombing of Tokyo, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, on 9–10 March, killed an estimated 100,000 people and destroyed 41 km 2 (16 sq mi) of the city and 267,000 buildings in a single night. It was the deadliest bombing raid of the war, at a cost of 20 B-29s shot down by flak and fighters. [ 42 ]