Bombing of Tokyo

Bombing of Tokyo
Part of the air raids on Japan during the Pacific War
Tokyo burns under B-29 firebomb assault on May 26, 1945
Date 1942, 1944–1945 Location Tokyo, Japan
Belligerents
United States	Japan
Casualties and losses
105,000+ dead

The bombing of Tokyo (東京空襲, Tōkyō kūshū) was a series of air raids on Japan by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), primarily launched during the closing campaigns of the Pacific Theatre of World War II in 1944–1945, prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The strikes conducted by the USAAF on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, constitute the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history.^[1] 16 square miles (41 km²; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.^[1]

The U.S. mounted the Doolittle Raid, a small-scale air raid on Tokyo by carrier-based long-range bombers, in April 1942. However, strategic bombing and urban area bombing of Japan only began at scale in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Superfortress bomber entered service. Superforts were first deployed from China and thereafter from the Mariana Islands, after they were seized from Japanese forces in mid-1944. B-29 raids from the Marianas began on 17 November 1944 and lasted until 15 August 1945, the day of the Japanese surrender.^[2]

Over half of Tokyo's industry was spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut the city's industrial output in half.^[3] Some modern post-war analysts have called the raids a war crime due to the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure and ensuing large-scale loss of civilian life.^[4][5]