105,400 dead in one night: American fire bombing of Tokyo - YouTube It was June 22nd, the day Okinawa fell to the Americans. I mean, he was actually being trained to do this. Robert Rodenhouse, B-29 Pilot: The biggest problem was something that the Air Force discovered, that nobody ever knew about or heard about. Edward Drea: How do you end this, on both sides? Narrator:The emperor directed a special surrender message to his armed forces. Tokyo burns during a raid on May 26,. "If we can not fulfill our responsibility to the throne," replied a furious Anami, "We should offer our sincere apologies by committing hara-kiri." Narrator: Three hundred and fifty-five planes began the attack on April 6th. Others would return home. Truman's diary entry that night read: "Fini Japs when that comes about." When he was in Europe, he developed the tight defensive formations they used for bombing. But I think it's worth saying that there's a certain equality there; that they are both very important. On August 14, President Truman received a message from the Japanese government that he deemed an unconditional surrender. Conrad Crane, Historian: We tend to focus today on the bomb as some kind of key decision of 1945, that all these leaders are agonizing whether to use the bomb or not. Office of War Information It was very clear in the messages that the Japanese intended to fight to the bitter end. There were more than 40 carriers, 18 battleships, 200 destroyers. Narrator:Hoping to avoid what he called an "Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other," Truman approved only the Kyushu landing and only after all the Chiefs endorsed it. They came almost every night, and we would go to bed with our regular clothes on every night, then, we had the air raid the night of March 10. By some counts, the battle for Sugar Loaf Hill was the hardest for Americans anywhere in World War II. Harry Truman: I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government. Well, there's no place in the world that US forces are engaged in a tactical battle on the 25th of July. It seems pretty clear to me that he must be talking about the intercepts. Everybody was shocked. Fighter opposition nil." Donald Miller:And he said, I wonder if this is what the Japanese leaders want us to believe, and maybe to get us to back off unconditional surrender, because it'll be such a slaughter. We carried 10 kg bombs on our shoulders and headed for Kakazu at night. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, historian Jeffrey J. Hall on Twitter: "RT @DavidMcNeill3: I'll be emceeing We should now pursue a peace settlement of the Pacific War, now. Stimson told Truman that if we don't use the emperor to obtain an organized capitulation of the Japanese armed forces, we could be facing a score of Iwo Jimas or Okinawas across the Asian continent, in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Lt. Yoshio Emoto was one of 269 survivors. By John Amari TOKYO. But she pulled the pin and threw it and blew him to kingdom come. Nearly 200,000 troops had boarded at 11 ports - from Seattle and San Francisco to Leyte in the Philippines. Which was real strange. Douglas MacArthur was determined to lead the greatest invasion in the history of warfare. Anami was quite good at Japanese stick fighting or kendo. Professor Fedman would introduce the film and . "Iron Pants LeMay," I guess you could say. Katsumoto Saotome: Chronicler of Tokyo firebombing RT @DavidMcNeill3: I'll be emceeing this screening and talk on Adrian Francis' documentary about the 1945 Tokyo firebombing TONIGHT at Sophia University. After six weeks he managed to get back to his base. Lawsuits brewing faster than Sanka. I shall never look back. Herbert Bix The jet stream and bad weather over Japan forced him to try something bold, something that had never been tried before. In April he had agreed to a strategy of invading Japan. Narrator:Torrential rains and mud also hindered their advance. Why don't we reschedule the whole thing and invade Norway, where the German defenses are weaker?" He was a passionate defender of Ketsu-Go. Osaka, with its shipyards and steel mills. I saw a father throw his three children off, and then jump himself. US Marine Corps Narrator:Their reward would be a place of honor among the spirits of the war dead who dwelled at Yasukuni, the great Shinto shrine in Tokyo. The Bombing of Tokyo (, Tkydaiksh) was a series of firebombing air raids by the United States Army Air Force during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. A report he commissioned warned people were growing critical even rebellious. ", Female Voice: "Dear General, this is the anniversary of my son, Nicky being killed over Tokyo." General Anami was really the personification of a Japanese soldiers, soldier. And then he turned his plane and dove into the carrier. The atom bomb had been tested successfully at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall took the lead. Narrator:For five days, American forces were unopposed as they headed south. More than 70,000 died trying to defend it. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. "Katsumoto Saotome, chronicler of Tokyo firebombing, dies at 90. Richard Frank:The premise of Ketsu-Go was that American morale was brittle. Richard Frank:Marshall essentially evades giving a direct answer to that question. It sucks out all the oxygen. Fireball in the Night: The Bombing of Japan - YouTube Narrator:After nearly a month of attack and counterattack, Marines relieved a shattered Army division. Jerome Connolly, U.S. Army medic Conrad Crane:When the B-29 crews heard that he was also taking away most of the armaments - the only bullets being left on board were for the tail guns, he was disarming the other guns -- they were really disturbed. Her contribution would be to attract fighter planes from the US carriers and leave the fleet more vulnerable to kamikaze attacks. Narrator: The Imperial Army planned to counterattack the US forces that made it to land. Narrator:The emperor broke the deadlock. Damage was negligible. Kaleidoscope And it bothered me a lot. Strategic bombing and urban area bombing began in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service, first deployed from China . Hirohito was considered divine the 124th descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. In June the invasion planners projected three Japanese divisions in southern Kyushu.By July there was evidence of nine divisions - triple the number in just one month. I was just hanging there over the cliff. Then there's nobody on the beach? It's a lot easier, once you've incinerated 100,000 Japanese in Tokyo, to drop an atomic bomb that's going to kill less than that, on Hiroshima. You couldn't breathe it. Archive Films by Getty Images Chester Nimitz, admiral of the Pacific fleet, was appalled. But nobody works that out. And that's the way we all felt. ", Donald Miller:And Nimitz wired back, "Delete everything after 'I may be crazy.' Narrator:The incendiary jelly napalm had just been developed in 1944 by DuPont and Standard Oil. No bombing raid in the war had been more destructive. Ronald Reagan: Within a radius of 15 miles of the Imperial Palace live seven million Japanese, a people we used to think of as small, dainty, polite, concerning themselves only with floral arrangements and rock gardens and the cultivation of silk worms. Katsumoto Saotome, who as a 12-year-old schoolboy survived the American firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War and later spent decades chronicling in books and documentary films the. But it was James Byrnes, the Secretary of State, who had Truman's ear aboard ship. There was no resistance at all. Edward Drea:If this would have happened, the invaders of the land of the gods would have entered the world of the dead on both sides. This was not the powerless, symbolic emperor like the King of England that Togo and some of Truman's advisors - had imagined. Just before midnight, he recorded a surrender message. Come out naked if you are a man and come out waving a handkerchief if you are a woman!" Edward Drea:Ultra told a startling story in July of 1945. But it was coming from all sides. It just blew my mind. Japan's war cabinet only began to discuss the Potsdam Declaration after the Soviet Union entered the war on August 8, two days after an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima. Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II,American ExperiencepresentsVictory in the Pacific, a powerful documentary from producer Austin Hoyt (Reagan, MacArthur, Chicago: City of the Century). Intercepts, codenamed Magic, of the exchange between Foreign Minister Togo in Tokyo and Japan's Ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, tell a different story. On March 10, 1945, a U.S. air attack on . Katsumoto Saotome, who as a 12-year-old schoolboy survived the American firebombing of Tokyo during World War II and later spent decades chronicling in books and documentary films the largely. ITN Archive / Reuters Victory in the Pacificsees the authorization to use the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in this context of fierce Japanese resistance to an invasion. Donald Miller:Death on these ships was really awful. Narrator:Truman sided with Byrnes. "What worries me," he confided, "is whether the nation will be able to endure it until then." In 1943, at Dugway Proving Ground, southwest of Salt Lake City, the U.S. Army built a Japanese village with rows of . In Paper City, Japanese Survivors Recount Their Experiences Of The 1945 Irvin Gehret, 6th Marine division: We just went down there, and then when we got on the hill, and all this open ground behind us, they shot us up and killed a lot of people wounded a lot of people, at least a third of our company. They were derided by some as "emperor worshippers," but they knew what Baron Hiranuma meant by "imperial prerogatives". Harry George: What are we doing here with an airplane at 5,000 feet, when it was-- we were trained to do missions above 20,000 feet? M-69 Incendiary Bomb (1945) - YouTube After the firebombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, sixteen square miles of Tokyo lay in ruins, about one quarter of the city. TIMEMagazine 1945 Time Inc. Reprinted by Permission "These men are watching Tokyo burn down around them, and it's having no effect on their position," says Richard Frank, author ofDownfall, The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Then the Marines cleared out the side hills. "Not one B-26 came home that day," he remembered. He postponed a decision on invading Tokyo. Adrian Francis, the director of the documentary film "Paper City," in Tokyo on Jan. 30 (Asahi Shimbun file photo) . Civilians were now fair game. We're short of food. Irvin Gehret, 6th Marine Division Yoshiko Hashimoto, Tokyo firebomb survivor In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i, causing the U.S. to enter World War II. Victory in the Pacificlooks at the terrible costof the battle. Margaret Johnson Forty-six student nurses shared a cave with the army. Narrator: LeMay's gamble was not using napalm. President Harry S. Truman and his advisors realized that Okinawa was a glimpse of what an invasion of Japan would be like. Mainichi Photo Bank ", "Teacher, help me! On Okinawa the US Army and Marines were destroying the last line of Japanese resistance cave by cave. Hirohito's concern about the nation's "enduring" until it won a decisive battle and his concern about the "ordinary hardships" of war draw on Bix's language, p. 489-90 and 523. My father told me so I just follow people, people, and lot of people jump the cliff. A number of people appeared on-camera and are listed below. Operation Meetinghouse, which was conducted on the night of 9-10 March 1945, is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. The sacred mirror, symbol of the sun goddess, was worshipped at the Grand Shrine at Ise. It was gone. 03/06/2015 An estimated 100,000 people perished in the firebomb raid on Tokyo in the night of March 9-10, 1945. What was the basis for war termination? Irvin Gehret:This one person, he was right next to me. This is a war that's going to fly out of control. Bombing of Tokyo - Wikipedia He was luring his enemy into a trap. They also prepared for an invasion of Japan from Okinawa. Narrator:Called the Superfortress, the B-29 was the most advanced bomber in the world. You're, you're as frightened as a man could be, as you go in. While in the midst of an uneasy slumber, the city's residents were suddenly . Some would occupy Germany. It was the night of March 9th to 10th, 1945. Glenn Heath, Production Interns Narrator:Marines learned not to trust those who surrendered even civilians. When dropped from a plane, it pancakes and spreads consuming flame like a fountain. In just one night of bombing 100,000 citizens were killed, a million were made homeless and approximately 25 percent of the city was wiped off the map. Couldn't believe it. So, so you'd just seal them up. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa:This is totally devoid of personal responsibility or responsibility of Japan causing that war. Isn't it natural that I decided not to sacrifice my life again? Paper City: Untold Stories of WWII | Movies - Metropolis Japan Retaining the emperor had been the idea of Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew and Japan experts in the State Department, including Joseph Ballantine. We had been told not to be captured. But we didn't think of them as humans or anything like that. Peter Haydu It would be as brutal as war gets a death embrace between America demanding unconditional surrender. Published 2 months ago on March 9, 2023 By Arielle Busetto Mediating an end to the war that would be acceptable to Japan. The Mariana Islands put Tokyo within range of the B-29 Superfortress, America's sophisticated new long-range bomber. "But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. Much of its merchant fleet was gone. "Dear General, Dear General. Edward Drea: In essence what the emperor says is, "Things didn't quite go our way. There were no open flanks. The Deadliest Air Raid in History - Smithsonian Magazine It was a response that Ambassador Sato had said would never come. Only 24 of the 111 planes on the first mission over Tokyo dropped bombs near the aircraft factory. She never got that far. Once in a while you would hear a gunshot someplace, but nothing happened. LeMay's fantasy scene in which he agonizes over the risks of low altitude incendiary flights is drawn from "Mission," p. 348-352. Conrad Crane, another war historian, adds, "It's a lot easier to drop an atomic bomb that's going to kill fewer than that on Hiroshima.". By August 5, after nine days, Japan had not officially responded. But they don't give up. Harry S. Truman Library It also offered various terms for Japan to rejoin the family of nations, It was signed by the allies in the war against Japan but not by the Soviet Union, which had not yet declared war. Thirteen times. " " 'It's all ashes,' another general said. At an Imperial conference on June 8th, Anami argued that the entire nation should fight to the death. Watch the government film produced by the Army Air Forces in 1945 and narrated by Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan. Richard Frank:With Truman, we have this extraordinary entry in his diary on the 25th of July, 1945, where he talks about meeting in the morning with General Marshall and British Admiral Mountbatten, and they talked about the tactical and political situation. It becomes a war of racial savagery that culminates in a decision to drop an atomic bomb as an act of liberation to end the thing. For Marshall, it was a preview of hell. Conrad Crane:This is the great escalation in the air war. Richard Williams, Colorist & Online Editor Please prepare a plane for me." At one point, Admiral Leahy, Truman's chief of staff, suggests it'll be like Okinawa, 35% of the committed forces. Narrator: On March 9, 1945 Gen. Curtis LeMay dispatched 325 B-29s armed with incendiary bombs on the first low altitude mission against Japan. The description of "reproachful expressions" of the March 10 firebombing victims as the emperor toured the ruins draws on language from Bix, p. 491. As Emperor Hirohito toured the destruction in Tokyo, the largest fleet ever assembled more than 40 carriers, 18 battleships, and 200 destroyers -- approached the Japanese island of Okinawa.. Terrain's everything here. Edward Drea:Just imagine you're George Marshall, and on the eve of the Normandy invasion, you suddenly tell Dwight Eisenhower, "Hey, don't invade Normandy. In July the intercepts identified nine divisions protecting Kyushu. Corporal Masayuki Shimada remembers the ritual. Narrator: Byrnes was in a tough position. We don't think their night fighters amount to anything. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Japan's response to the Potsdam Declaration arrived in Washington August 10th. Seventy years ago today, US forces firebombed Tokyo to force the Japanese to an early surrender in the dying months of World War II. Paper City: The Story of Survivors of the 1945 Fire-Bombing of Tokyo Wed, Jun 21 20238:05 PM EDT. It was suicidal. Many would redeploy to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. And Stimson isn't even talking about the home islands. Conrad Crane:I think the best explanation of why the Japanese surrender is it's because a whole series of shocks that occur. From the maintenance crew." On one mission, one of the men in my unit was shot and critically wounded. Kimberly Langley, Sound & Assistant Camera Nord Stream Expedition Reveals New Details About Bombing - The Intercept What was the understanding? And Togo thought that. And it was a trench that we were in, waiting for the word to move out. That many ships. Here's Tokyo. And it was not a weighty matter. What are we doing for the troops?" Hard to weight which are more important. The emperor transcended those worldly forms. "It is my belief," he said with sadness, "that continuation of the war promises nothing but additional destruction." Some Japanese soldiers started firing and in response the American soldiers threw in a grenade. Francis explains the reason for his interest in the Tokyo firebombing. Conrad Crane, historian American casualties at Sugar Loaf Hill were more than 2,500. General Curtis LeMay with MacKinlay Kantor Air raids on Japan During World War II, Allied forces conducted air raids on Japan from 1942 to 1945, causing extensive destruction to the country's cities and killing between 241,000 and 900,000 people. My crew says, I think those generals lost their marbles. The Tokyo firebombing was the apprenticeship for a generation of future Cold War warriors. And this mentality of constantly being on alert, the warning, the attack, the warning, the attack, and a place coming right on you, drove a lot of guys beserk. 267,000 buildings - about one quarter of the city. He went to the Berlin suburb of Potsdam to discuss post-war Europe with Allied leaders. Donald Miller:Here's a man who ought to be thinking about his children as he called them, his people. When the ultimatum arrived in Tokyo, Japan's prime minister, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, said the government intended to ignore it. Moscow approach, I think, is crucial to terminate the war. Propaganda and Warning Leaflet Dropped on Japan. Hirohito did not press his government to accept it. In the suburbs of Tokyo is the huge Nakajima aircraft plant. "Help!" He counted on his subjects to endure and did nothing. This is the anniversary of my son Nicky being killed over Tokyo. And I couldn't understand why there was a God that would permit that to happen, and use me to see that it was being done, you know. I do not think that Westerners can fully understand this behavior. The Firebombing of Tokyo: The History of the U.S. Air Force's Most Narrator:The Marines kept assaulting Sugar Loaf Hill. Narrator: And to the Japanese, the Americans are big hairy red beasts, who are going to defile our culture, rape our women. Mark Felton Productions The Allied bombing of German cities in World War II was unjustifiable Intelligence Squared The Doolitte Raid on Tokyo (1942): The US Strikes Back | Battle 360 | History. Haruo Iguchi, historian Surely didn't. Narrator:Japan's military government had expanded its empire from Korea and Manchuria to China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and the southwest and central Pacific. The war cabinet was divided over surrender. (Her singing segues into Umi Yukaba anthem for "Ushijima cave"). It totaled more than five million troops. Fearing the atomic bomb would end the war before he entered, Stalin advanced the date. 12 Lesson Abstract Students will analyze eyewitness descriptions of the firebombing of Tokyo and respond to it in a method of (mostly) their choosing. LeMay, the inspiration for the demented Gen Jack D Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's anti-war satire, Dr . They saw it in the Marshall Islands where, of almost 5,000 Japanese troops on Kwajelein, only 79 survived. And they were fortified in the belief that they should just press on. There was a hill on it Marines called Sugar Loaf. The smell of Pearl Harbor fires is too persistent in our nostrils." Japan was dependent on oil and food from its Asian Empire. They actually get to the summit, get in a firefight with the Japanese, and get pushed off the rock, pushed off the hill. Narrator:In a radio broadcast at noon on August 15th, Japanese people heard something they had never heard before their emperor's voice. At the same time, 1 million were rendered homeless and over 41 square kilometers of. Most of Tokyo was asleep. ", "Television often looks at the last year of the war as a series of separate stories - Okinawa, the kamikazes, the B-29s, the bomb," saysAmerican Experienceexecutive producer Mark Samels. And they could drop a shell in your back pocket so we were completely exposed, going up that hill. 'This is out -- this -- this.' What would have come out later if all of a sudden the invasion went in and had all these casualties, and American public found out later that, well, we had this super-bomb but we didn't want to use it because we thought we were going to kill too many Japanese? The Use of Which Has Not Always Been Specifically Authorized by The Copyright Owner. He was a leader of the Senate at the time that Truman was really a junior Senator. The Japs would then lay into them, and we'd try to keep them down with our machine guns. Mr Tsukiyama at the 70th anniversary of the firebombing. Anami's last act was that of a proud Japanese warrior who had fought his battle and lost. Remembering the night 100,000 died when US firebombed Tokyo Richard Frank:The scientists had calculated that anybody who'd be killed by radiation would have already been killed by a rock or blast or heat. Everybody started screaming, "Mother, help me!" Not surrendering. "You idiot!" You know, it just, it was wonderful. One remembers it as "a pimple of a hill." They suffocated because there was no more oxygen to breathe. He wanted actual power. And we could be wrong as hell. Narrator:These questions faced America's new President, Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt after he died in April. The rebels ransacked the Imperial Palace, hoping to destroy the surrender message. PAPER CITY | Documentary Australia The imperial line predated the Meiji constitution of 1868. Todd Lamothe If they could stop an invasion that would destroy their country, their culture, their Emperor, and their villages, they will have done great things. Masayuki Shimada: In my plane, I found a message card, "We wish success to Corporal Shimada.
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