What was the Tokyo Firebombing?
The firebombing of Tokyo was an American bombing raid on the Japanese city of Tokyo which occurred on the night of 9 March, 1945. Over the course of the bombing raid, American planes dropped an estimated 2,000 tons of explosives on the city, creating a massive firestorm which killed countless numbers of civilians. Estimates for the death toll in the firebombing of Tokyo range from 70,000 to almost 200,000, with most historians settling for around 130,000.
The firebombing of Tokyo was an American bombing raid on the Japanese city of Tokyo which occurred on the night of 9 March, 1945. Over the course of the bombing raid, American planes dropped an estimated 2,000 tons of explosives on the city, creating a massive firestorm which killed countless numbers of civilians. Estimates for the death toll in the firebombing of Tokyo range from 70,000 to almost 200,000, with most historians settling for around 130,000. This event in Japanese history is often overshadowed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which occurred just a few months later. Unlike these events, the Tokyo firebombing is not widely discussed, even in Japan, although it was a major event in the Second World War. The Tokyo firebombing marked one of the first incidents in which civilians were the victims of a mass-bombing which deliberately and viciously targeted an entire city, following hard on the heels of the devastating firebombing of Dresden in February 1945.
