The Night Tokyo Burned

by Hoito Edoin

Book by Edoin, Hoito

Genres: History, Japan, War, World War II, Nonfiction

248 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Blake Griggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not expect the tangential connection to “Kafka on the Shore” when I chose to read this, though I may follow up with “Akira” to fill out some kind of Japanese national psychic trauma trilogy. Lucid recollection of the American firebombing campaign against Japan throughout 1945 planned and conducted by General Curtis LeMay. The accounts of survivors and the scale of injury, death, and property loss are now branded upon my mind. Difficult, heartwrenching, but necessary reading. By the author’s admission the authoritative account is by a historian named Saotome Katsumoto, who was at the great Tokyo fire of March 10-11, 1945
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Two things I’d like to record here to remember(Content Warning):

“Now the area was ablaze, and the family fled down Mitsubei Avenue, facing the Omiya Bridge, Here Hashimoto found the fire before and behind him. Both banks of the Sumida River were ablaze, and the heat was almost unbearable. The fire seemed to be everywhere. Hashimoto was terrified, it looked like a great snake or dragon, its mouth belching fire. Heavy smoke was blowing everywhere in those high winds that swept the fire along. The fire itself had not yet reached this area, He watched, terrified, his whole body shaking. Then he saw a strange sight: a woman in a gold-braid kimono with gold and silver threads and a one-piece obi, shining in the bright light of the fire, a red lotus blossom in her flying hair as she was whipped and twisted by the hot wind. Suddenly her whole body burst into flame like a hot torch. Then an unlined kimono came swirling out of the fire storm toward him and dropped on the ground.” -p.68

“They were in a forest of corpses, in every direction, bodies were crumpled so closely together that they must have been touching when they died…. There was no one to rescue. Touch one of the roasted bodies, and the flesh would crumble in the hand. Humanity reduced to the essential, turned into carbon.” -p.100

[Michael Maciolek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives an overview of the bombing of mainland Japan, which started in late 1944 and continued right up until the surrender in 1945. The author briefly discusses the unsuccessful raids on industrial targets of late 1944, then spends the majority of the book discussing the firebombing of Japan, starting in March of 1945. This book seems to be evenly split between discussion of the strategy and progression of the firebombing campaign, and personal stories of those affected by it. Though I read this hoping for more information on the campaign itself, personal stories from some of the worst-hit areas of the firebombing campaign definitely add a human element to the war and add perspective that would be lost in a solely academic book.

The book does a good job in not explicitly taking a side, though the author has plenty of moral criticism for General Curtis LeMay. On one hand, the author describes the survivors of the firebombings seeing close family brutally die and suffocate to death in some of the most egregious examples of firebombing, and how LeMay knew that bombing civilian populations was the only way to continue a successful air war (as early attacks on Japanese industrial targets simply were not achieving their goals). On the other hand, the author often mentions the Japanese government's refusal to surrender, or even acknowledge the extent of the damage of the American bombings to its people. If the militarists had their way, Japan would not surrender until every last Japanese person had died defending their homeland, regardless of whether they all actually wanted to die this way. Stuck in the middle were the millions of Japanese civilians, trapped between a country trying to burn into submission and a government refusing to give an inch, even in the case of abundant death.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, available in paperback, recounts the fire bombing campaign on Japanese cities from 1944-1945. A middle section includes photographs taken from the air and on the ground.

This history, well written from a mostly military perspective, includes both American and Japanese perspectives.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book on the firebombing of Japan, especially Tokyo. Well done.