March 9th, 1945.
11:48 at night, Major General Seo Arisuer, Chief of Intelligence for the Imperial Japanese Army, stood at the window of his office in the War Ministry building, watching search lights probe the darkness over Tokyo.
The air raid sirens had begun wailing 8 minutes earlier.
He’d heard them countless times over the past month.
American B29 superfortresses had been visiting Tokyo since November, dropping bombs from altitudes so high the anti-aircraft guns could barely reach them.
The raids had been more nuisance than catastrophe.
Precision attacks on aircraft factories, a few hundred casualties here and there.
Troubling certainly, but manageable.
The first indication that tonight would be different came at 11:53.
Arisuer’s aid burst through the door.
his face pale.
Sir, the observation posts are reporting something strange.
The B-29s are coming in low, very low.
Arisua turned from the window.
Low altitude bombing? That made no sense.
The Americans had spent months perfecting high altitude tactics specifically to stay beyond the reach of Japanese defenses.
Flying low would expose them to every gun in the city.
How low? 5 to 7,000 ft, sir.
Maybe lower.
And there are dozens of them, maybe more than a hundred.
Through the window, Arisu saw the first clusters of incendiaries ignite.
Not the usual high explosive bombs, but thousands of small fires blooming across the Shitamachi district like deadly flowers.
the workingclass neighborhoods east of the Sumida River where wooden houses pressed against each other in dense warren where a million people slept.
By midnight the fires had merged into a single mass.
Arisuer could feel the heat through the glass.
Though the inferno was miles away, the wind that night was blowing at 30 mph, driving the flames through the narrow streets faster than people could run.
The phone on his desk rang constantly.
reports from fire brigades, police stations, military posts, each one more desperate than the last.
The fires were creating their own weather system, generating winds so powerful they were tearing people off their feet and hurling them into the flames.
At the Imperial Palace, barely 2 miles from the war ministry, Emperor Hirohito had been awakened by his chamberlain at midnight.
The emperor, 44 years old, stood at the window of his private quarters, watching the eastern sky turn orange.
He said nothing for several minutes.
Behind him, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Kochi waited, unsure whether to speak.
“How many aircraft?” the emperor finally asked.
“The reports are still coming in, your majesty.
At least 200, possibly 300.” The emperor’s hands, Kido noticed, were trembling slightly, and they are using incenduries.
Yes, your majesty.
Hirohito had studied military science since childhood.
He understood what incenduries meant when dropped on a city where 90s% of the structures were wood.
He understood what 300 bombers could do in a single night.
“Summon the war council,” he said quietly.
I want to know what is happening.
All of it.
But the war council couldn’t assemble.
War Minister General Ketchica Anami was at his residence in western Tokyo, cut off by the spreading fires.
Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai was trapped at the Navy Ministry building.
Chief of the Army General Staff Yoshiro Umezu was at Imperial General Headquarters receiving fragmentaryary reports that contradicted each other.
Some said the fires were under control.
Others said entire neighborhoods had ceased to exist.
At 1:15 in the morning, Arisu received a call from the commander of the first anti-aircraft division.
The man was shouting to be heard over the roar of flames in the background.
We can’t stop them.
They’re too low and there are too many.
Our guns can’t traverse fast enough.
The fire is The line went dead.
The B-29s kept coming for two more hours.
They flew in streams one after another, each dropping clusters of M69 incendiary bombs.
Six lb cylinders filled with napalm that burst into white hot flames on impact.
Each bomber carried 40 clusters.
Each cluster held 38 bomb blitz.
Do the mathematics.
334 bombers, each dropping more than500 individual firebombs.
Half a million separate fires ignited across 16 square miles of the most densely populated urban area on Earth.
Major Yoshitaka Huri, a staff officer at Imperial General Headquarters, was on duty that night in the underground command center.
He watched the reports accumulate on the situation map.
Red pins for fires, black pins for destroyed fire stations, white pins for hospitals overwhelmed with casualties.
By 2 in the morning, there were so many pins the map was barely visible beneath them.
Get me casualty estimates, ordered a subordinate.
The young left tenant looked at him helplessly.
Sir, the police can’t reach most of the affected areas.
The fires are still burning.
The bridges across the Sumida are jammed with people trying to escape.
Some of the bridges have collapsed from the heat.
We have reports of people jumping into the river and boiling to death because the water itself is heating up.
Hi felt his stomach turn.
He’d served in China.
He’d seen what war did to cities.
But this was different.
This was Tokyo, his city, the heart of the empire.
Give me your best estimate.
The left tenant consulted his notes, his hand shaking.
Based on population density in the affected areas and the percentage of structures destroyed, tens of thousands dead, sir.
Maybe more, maybe many more.
At 3:30 in the morning, the last B29 departed.
The fires burned on.
They would burn for four more days.
As dawn broke on March 10th, General Anne finally reached the war ministry.
He’d walked the last three miles because the roads were impassible.
His uniform was covered in ash.
His face was stre with soot and sweat.
He found in his office still standing at the window watching smoke rise from the ruins.
Show me, Anami said.
They drove east in a military car as close as the fires would allow.
At the edge of the burned zone, Anami got out and walked forward.
The heat was still intense enough to make breathing difficult.
What had been streets were now corridors between walls of ash.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Most were burned beyond recognition.
Some had been caught in the open and were now charred shapes barely identifiable as human.
Others had sought shelter in canals and water tanks where they’d been boiled alive.
Still others had been esphixxiated by the smoke before the flames reached them, and these looked almost peaceful, as if sleeping, except for their blue lips and the way their hands clutched at their throats.
And Amy, who had commanded troops in some of the worst fighting in China and Manuria, who had seen cities burn and civilians die, stood in the ruins of Tokyo and wept.
Not openly, not dramatically, just tears running down his ashtained face as he surveyed the destruction.
“How many?” he asked quietly.
“We don’t know yet, sir.
The fires are still too intense to conduct proper searches, but based on the population density of the Shitamachi district and the extent of the destruction,” Arisu paused.
80,000 at minimum, possibly more than 100,000.
100,000 dead in a single night.
More than Hiroshima would kill 5 months later.
More than any military action in human history up to that point.
Anami closed his eyes.
And the bombers, 14 lost, sir, out of more than 300.
14, less than 5%.
The Americans had traded 14 aircraft and perhaps 140 crewmen for 100,000 Japanese civilians.
The mathematics of it was obscene and the strategic implications were worse.
The war council finally convened at noon on March 10th in an emergency session at the Imperial Palace.
They met in an underground bunker, though the fires were miles away now.
Emperor Hirohito attended personally, which was unusual.
Normally he remained silent during these meetings, a symbolic presence while his ministers debated.
Today he spoke first.
Explain to me what happened last night.
General Umeu, chief of the army general staff, stood to brief.
He was 62 years old, a career military man who had spent 40 years preparing for war.
Nothing in that preparation had equipped him for this.
Your Majesty, at approximately 11:50, American B29 bombers began attacking Tokyo with incendiary bombs.
The attack lasted approximately 2 1/2 hours.
The bombers flew at unusually low altitude between 5 and 9,000 ft, which reduced the effectiveness of our anti-aircraft defenses.
They dropped M69 incendiary cluster bombs designed to start fires in wooden structures.
The bombs were highly effective.
Strong winds that night, gusting to 30 mph, spread the fires rapidly through the Shitamachi district.
Casualties? The emperor asked.
Still being assessed, your majesty.
Preliminary estimates suggest tens of thousands dead, possibly exceeding 100,000, perhaps as many as a million people are now homeless.
16 square miles of the city have been destroyed.
The room was silent.
Navy Minister Yonai, who had opposed the war from the beginning, stared at his hands.
Prime Minister Kunyaki Coiso looked as if he might be sick.
War Minister Anami stood rigid, his face expressionless.
“And our response?” The emperor continued.
Umezu glanced at Anami, who stepped forward.
“Your majesty, we shot down 14 enemy bombers.
Our night fighter units engaged where possible, but the Americans attacked in a concentrated stream that overwhelmed our defenses.
Our anti-aircraft guns were effective at low altitude, but there were simply too many targets.
The fires spread too quickly for our fire brigades to contain them.
The wind created a firestorm effect that made firefighting impossible in many areas.
14 aircraft, the emperor said quietly.
Out of how many? Intelligence estimates 334 bombers participated in the raid.
Your majesty, the emperor looked at an army directly.
General, I want you to understand what I’m asking.
The Americans lost 14 aircraft to kill 100,000 of my subjects and destroy 16 square miles of my capital.
What does this tell us about their capability to continue such attacks? The Nami understood perfectly.
The emperor was asking whether Japan could survive a sustained campaign of such raids, whether the war was still winnable, whether continuing to fight made any strategic sense at all.
Your majesty, an army began carefully.
The Americans have approximately 500 B29 bombers in the Maranas.
If they can sustain this operational tempo, they could attack every major city in Japan within a matter of months.
Our air defenses are inadequate against mass lowaltitude incendiary raids.
Our fighter strength is depleted.
We lack the fuel and pilots to mount effective interceptions.
And our cities, as your majesty knows, are particularly vulnerable to fire.
Then we must evacuate the cities, said Prime Minister Kiso.
Move the population to the countryside, disperse the industrial facilities.
General Umezu shook his head.
Evacuate 12 million people from the major cities.
With what transportation to where? And how would we feed them? Our rice production is already insufficient.
Moving millions more people into agricultural areas would create mass starvation.
Then what do you propose? Cooiso demanded.
The question hung in the air.
What could they propose? The Americans controlled the seas around Japan.
They controlled the skies above Japan.
They could burn Japanese cities at will, and there was nothing the Imperial military could do to stop them.
Admiral Yonai spoke for the first time.
Gentlemen, I believe we must face certain realities.
Last night’s raid was not an isolated incident.
It was a demonstration of capability.
The Americans have shown us that they can destroy our cities whenever they choose.
They have shown us that our defenses cannot stop them, and they have shown us that they are willing to use this capability without restraint.
He paused, looking around the table.
The question is not whether they will continue these attacks.
They will.
The question is whether we can achieve any of our war aims before they burn every city in Japan to the ground.
We fight on, Anami said firmly.
We make them pay for every foot of Japanese soil.
We make the cost of invasion so high that they will negotiate rather than continue.
Last night was terrible.
Yes.
But the Japanese people are strong.
They will endure.
They will sacrifice.
And when the Americans finally attempt to land troops on our shores, we will destroy them on the beaches.
With what forces? Yonai asked quietly.
Our best divisions are scattered across the Pacific, cut off and starving.
Our navy barely exists.
Our air force is reduced to training obsolete aircraft for kamicazi missions.
And now our cities are burning.
What exactly will we fight with, General? Anami’s face flushed with anger.
We fight with the spirit of Yamato.
We fight with the courage of the samurai.
We fight because surrender is unthinkable.
Spirit does not stop incenderary bombs, Yonai replied.
Emperor Hirohito raised his hand slightly and both men fell silent.
“I wish to tour the damaged areas,” he said.
“I wish to see for myself what has been done to my capital and my people.” The ministers exchanged glances.
The emperor never left the palace grounds during wartime.
Security concerns made it impossible, but Hirohito’s tone made clear this was not a request.
“Your majesty,” Kido said carefully.
The situation in the affected areas is still chaotic.
Fires are still burning.
Bodies have not been recovered.
It would be dangerous and distressing.
“I will see it,” the emperor said flatly.
On March 18th, 8 days after the raid, Emperor Hirohito tooured the ruins of Tokyo.
His motorcade drove through streets lined with ash and rubble.
The fires had finally burned out, but the smell of death hung heavy in the air.
Recovery teams were still pulling bodies from the ruins.
Survivors wandered through the wreckage, searching for anything salvageable.
Some looked up as the Imperial car passed.
Most were too exhausted or traumatized to react.
The emperor’s chamberlain, who accompanied him, later wrote in his diary.
His majesty said nothing during the entire tour.
He looked at the ruins, at the survivors, at the recovery teams carrying bodies.
When we returned to the palace, he went immediately to his private quarters.
I heard later that he wept.
What the emperor saw that day was the end of the world he had known.
The Tokyo of his childhood, of his father’s reign, of a thousand years of imperial tradition gone, reduced to ash in a single night.
and the Americans had barely begun.
Between March 10th and the end of May, B29s returned again and again.
Nagoya burned on March 11th.
Osaka burned on March 13th.
Kobe burned on March 16th.
Nagoya burned again on March 19th.
Each raid followed the same pattern.
Hundreds of bombers, low altitude, incendiary bombs, tens of thousands dead.
By the end of May, every major city in Japan except Kyoto had been attacked.
More than 250,000 civilians were dead.
Millions were homeless.
The industrial capacity that remained after years of naval blockade was being systematically destroyed.
In the war ministry, the debates continued.
General Anne still argued for fighting on, for making the Americans pay such a high price for invasion that they would negotiate a conditional surrender.
But his arguments grew more desperate as the casualty reports mounted.
The mathematics of attrition that had always favored Japan in defensive warfare no longer applied when the enemy could simply burn your cities from the air.
Major Horry, the staff officer who had been on duty the night of March 10th, attended many of these planning sessions.
In his postwar memoir, he wrote, “By April, we all knew the war was lost.
The question was no longer whether we would lose, but how many more Japanese would die before we admitted defeat.
General Anne spoke of honor and sacrifice.
But when I looked at the casualty reports, I saw only numbers.
80,000 here, 50,000 there.
The numbers stopped meaning anything after a while.
They were just abstractions.
But then I would remember that night watching the pins accumulate on the map.
And I would realize that each number was a person, a mother, a father, a child, and we were letting them die for a war we knew we could not win.
General Arisour, the intelligence chief who had watched the first fires from his window, reached his own conclusion by midappril.
He began compiling a report for the war council titled Assessment of American Strategic Bombing Capability and implications for continued resistance.
The report was brutally honest.
The Americans had demonstrated the ability to destroy Japanese cities at will.
Japanese air defenses were inadequate and growing weaker as fuel and aircraft became scarce.
Civilian morale was deteriorating.
Industrial production was collapsing.
And the Americans showed no sign of stopping.
The report’s conclusion was carefully worded but unmistakable.
Continued resistance would result in the complete destruction of Japan’s urban centers and the deaths of millions of civilians without any realistic prospect of achieving favorable peace terms.
When Arisuer presented the report to General Umezu in late April, the chief of staff read it in silence, then looked up.
You are recommending surrender.
I am recommending that we face reality, sir.
Last night, Yokohama burned.
17 square miles destroyed, perhaps 14,000 dead.
The Americans did this with less than 500 bombers in 2 hours.
They have shown us what they can do.
They will continue to do it, and we cannot stop them.
Umezu set the report down.
The army will not accept surrender.
You know this.
General Anami will never agree.
Many of the younger officers would rather see Japan destroyed than admit defeat.
Some are already talking about a coup if the government attempts to surrender.
Then Japan will be destroyed.
Harris Suer said quietly.
Because the Americans will not stop.
They have the capability and the will to burn every city in Japan.
And after the cities are gone, they will burn the towns.
And after the towns are gone, they will burn the villages.
And when there is nothing left to burn, they will invade and millions more will die fighting a battle we cannot win.
Umeu stared at the report for a long moment.
I will present this to the war council, but I cannot promise they will listen.
The momentum of war has its own logic.
Sometimes it is easier to continue fighting than to admit you have lost.
The war council met again on May 8th.
Germany had surrendered the day before, ending the war in Europe.
Now the full weight of Allied military power would turn toward Japan.
The implications were obvious to everyone in the room.
Gentlemen, Prime Minister Kiso began, we must discuss our strategic position in light of recent developments.
Our position is clear, Anami interrupted.
We fight on.
We prepare for the decisive battle when the Americans attempt to invade the home islands.
We mobilize every able-bodied citizen.
We turn Japan into a fortress.
We make them pay such a price that they will negotiate rather than continue.
And how many Japanese will die in this decisive battle? Yonai asked.
As many as necessary, Anami replied.
The alternative is surrender, which is unthinkable.
Is it? Yonai leaned forward.
General, since March 10th, the Americans have killed more than 250,000 civilians in air raids.
They have destroyed 67 cities.
They have made millions of our people homeless.
They have crippled our industrial capacity.
And they have done all of this while losing fewer than 500 aircraft.
These are facts.
Now, you propose that we continue fighting until they invade, at which point we will fight a battle that will kill millions more Japanese.
For what? What do we gain? What do we achieve except more death? We preserve our honor.
And Nami said, “Honor?” Yonai’s voice rose.
I watched Tokyo burn from the Navy Ministry building.
I saw the sky turn orange.
I smelled the smoke.
I read the casualty reports.
Tell me, General, what honor is there in letting our people die for a war we cannot win? Anami stood abruptly.
The Navy has no right to speak of honor.
You lost the Pacific.
You lost our carriers.
You lost our fleet.
The army has been fighting and winning for 40 years.
And now you want us to surrender because you failed.
Gentlemen, Emperor Hirohito’s voice cut through the argument.
Both men turned, shocked.
The emperor never intervened in these debates.
Sit down, both of you.
They sat.
Hirohito looked at each man in turn.
I have heard these arguments before.
They do not change.
General Anami believes we must fight on.
Admiral Yonai believes we must seek peace.
Prime Minister Koisu attempts to find middle ground.
And while you argue, my people die.
He paused.
I toured Tokyo.
I saw what the Americans did.
I saw the bodies.
I saw the survivors.
I saw children orphaned, families destroyed.
a city reduced to ash.
And I know that this will continue.
The Americans will burn every city in Japan if we let them.
Soon they have shown us this.
Your majesty, Anami began, if we surrender, I am not finished, General.
The emperor’s voice was quiet, but firm.
You speak of honor and sacrifice.
You speak of the decisive battle, but I have seen enough death.
I have seen enough sacrifice.
and I wonder whether continuing this war serves Japan or merely serves our pride.
The room was utterly silent.
I do not order you to surrender, Hirohito continued.
Not yet.
But I order you to think carefully about what you are asking the Japanese people to endure, and I order you to remember that your duty is not to preserve your honor, but to preserve Japan.
The meeting adjourned without resolution, but something had shifted.
The emperor had spoken more directly than ever before about the possibility of ending the war, and everyone in the room understood what that meant.
In the weeks that followed, the firebombing continued.
The debate in the war council continued, and the death toll mounted.
General Anami remained adamant about fighting on.
Admiral Yonai became increasingly vocal about seeking peace.
The emperor watched and waited, knowing that eventually he would have to make a decision that would changed Japan forever.
On the night of March 9th, standing at his window, watching the first fires bloom over Tokyo, General Aris had understood immediately what was happening.
This was not just another air raid.
This was the beginning of the end.
The Americans had found a way to destroy Japan without ever landing a soldier on Japanese soil.
They would burn the cities, kill the civilians, break the will to resist.
And there was nothing the Imperial military could do to stop them.
Now, 2 months later, with dozens of cities destroyed and hundreds of thousands dead, the rest of Japan’s leadership was finally reaching the same conclusion.
The war was lost.
The only question was how many more would die before they admitted it.
General Anomy would never admit it.
He would argue for continued resistance until the very end.
On August 15th, after the emperor announced Japan’s surrender, Anami would commit ritual suicide rather than accept defeat.
His final words would be an apology to the emperor for failing to achieve victory.
But on that night in March, watching Tokyo burn, some part of him must have known.
The firestorm that consumed 16 square miles of his capital in a single night was not just destroying buildings and killing civilians.
It was destroying the illusion that Japan could still win this war.
It was destroying the belief that spirit and sacrifice could overcome industrial might and technological superiority.
It was destroying the world that men like Anami had built their entire lives around.
The fires burned for 4 days.
The debate in the war council would burn for five more months and in the end it would take two atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion of Manuria to finally force the decision that should have been made on March 10th.
But on that night, standing in the ruins of Tokyo, watching recovery teams pull bodies from the ash, General Anami wept.
Not for the dead, though they numbered in the tens of thousands.
Not for the city, though it lay in ruins, but for Japan itself, and for the future he could see coming, but could not accept.
The Americans had shown them what industrial warfare looked like in the 20th century.
They had shown them what happened when you fought an enemy with unlimited resources and no restraint.
They had shown them that courage and honor and sacrifice meant nothing against Napal and high explosives dropped from 30,000 ft.
And Japan’s high command, standing in the ashes of their capital, finally understood what they had done.
They had started a war they could not win.
They had continued a war they could not win.
And now their people were paying the price for that hubris in blood and fire.
The question was no longer whether Japan would lose.
The question was how many more nights like March 9th the country would endure before its leaders found the courage to admit defeat.
