MARCH 10, 1945 MUST NOT BE FORGOTTEN !

As many as 100,000 Japanese people were killed and another million injured, most of them civilians, when more than 300 American B-29 bombers dropped 1,500 tons of firebombs on the Japanese capital that night. The inferno the bombs created reduced an area of 15.8 square miles to ash. And, by some estimates, a million people were left homeless.

The human toll that night exceeded that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that year. (The atomic bombing of Hiroshima  razed and burnt around 70 per cent of all buildings. 80,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima. When combining those killed instantly and those killed from radiation and other aftermath, the total number is 192,020. In Nagasaki, more than 70,000 people were killed instantly.)

The main force of American B-29s unleashed 500,000 M-69 bombs, each one clustered in groups of 38 and weighing six pounds.

Destroyed areas

1. Kagoshima: 63%
2. Hamamatsu: 60%
3. Yokohama: 58%
4. Kobe: 56%
5. Kure: 42%
6. Tokyo: 40%
7. Nagoya: 40%
8. Osaka: 36%
9. Fukuoka: 24%
10. 54 other Japanese cities hit by U.S. bombs