Bombing of Tokyo in World War II

Bombing of Tokyo

Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault, 26 May 1945

Date	1942, 1944-1945
Location	Tokyo, Japan
Result	75,000–200,000 civilian deaths; roughly 1,000,000 displaced

Belligerents

United States

Japan

The Bombing of Tokyo (東京大空襲, Tōkyōdaikūshū^?), often referred to as a series of firebombing raids, was conducted as part of the air raids on Japan by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. The US first mounted a small-scale raid on Tokyo in April 1942.

Strategic bombing and urban area bombing began in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service, first deployed from China and thereafter the Mariana Islands. B-29 raids from those islands began on 17 November 1944, and lasted until 15 August 1945, the day Japan capitulated. The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9–10 March 1945, which annihilated 16 sq.miles and left over 1 million homeless, was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in human history; Japanese later called this event Night of the Black Snow.

The first raid on Tokyo was the Doolittle Raid of 18 April 1942, when sixteen B-25 Mitchells were launched from USS Hornet to attack targets including Yokohama and Tokyo and then fly on to airfields in China. The raid was retaliation against the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid did little damage to Japan's war capability but was a significant propaganda victory for the United States. Launched at longer range than planned when the task force encountered a Japanese picket boat, all of the attacking aircraft either crashed or ditched short of the airfields designated for landing. One aircraft landed in the neutral Soviet Union where the crew was interned, but then smuggled over the border into Iran on 11 May 1943. Two crews were captured by the Japanese in occupied China. Three crewmen from these groups were later executed.

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