Anniversary of Tokyo Bombardment

March 10^th is a memorial day of the Tokyo Great Bombardment sixty-nine years ago. The strategic bombing by the United States Force caused about one hundred thousands of deaths in the capital of Japan. The memorial has long been to remember tragedy brought by the war and renewing ant-war sentiment. However, resonant with growing revisionism led by political leaders, some people began to realize the strategic bombing as “massacre” done by U.S.

The Tokyo Bombardment was a series of strategic bombing on Tokyo. According to reports, March 10^th was the most brutal attack by 300 of U.S. B-29 Superfortress dropping 1,700 metric tons of incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. 260 thousands of houses on the both sides of Sumida River were totally burnt down, causing numerous deaths of innocent people. Memories of survivor were typically the accumulation of burnt human bodies, expressed as “living hell.”

A memorial ceremony was held in Tokyo on Monday, in which four hundred families prayed for the victims with attendance of Prince and Princess Akishino. “We will make,” told the Governor of Tokyo, Yoichi Masuzoe, “further effort for eternal peace with compassion for regrets of the victims.” That was a traditional sentiment against the tragedy in wartime.

However, earlier this year, a popular novelist and a close friend of Prime Minister, Naoki Hyakuta, told that Tokyo Bombardment and dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been massacres and Tokyo Tribunal was a justification of those. Around the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on Monday, noisy right wing activists chanted that March 10^th was a day of humiliation for the Japanese.

Actually, U.S. must be criticized on Tokyo Bombardment, because it killed a huge number of innocent citizens, even if it had been aimed at getting rid of fighting spirit of the Japanese. Other strategic bombings, such as Rotterdam Blitz by Nazis Germany or Dresden bombing by U.S., are also the targets of historians as inhumane acts of war. When the Japanese protest against Tokyo Bombardment, however, they ignore the series of Japan’s air raids on Chongqing until 1943. There is no positive sign of Japanese historians to join international discussion over strategic bombing.

As long as they do not have consensus on historical meaning of strategic bombing, the Japanese should not call Tokyo Bombardment massacre. Political leaders need to remind of the fact that the credibility of Japan has been maintained for a long time by consecutively restating the renounce of war. “I don’t like it” will not make a good reason for revising world history.