August 6, 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 9 August on Nagasaki. Why this sad fate has not been the capital of Japan is Tokyo? We will try to answer this question.
The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev: the divine economy of Japan cannot be arbitrarily interpreted as a punishment
- Islands in the ocean
- Hiroshima and Easter summer
- Hiroshima: 70 years of the tragedy. From the event
- The last picture of the Second world war
Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko
In the night from 9 to 10 March 1945 from the Mariana Islands and flew out 334 B-29 bomber and headed for Tokyo. The planes were carrying incendiary bombs, thousands of bombs each. These small bombs were assembled into cassettes, each bomb was seven liters of Napalm, recently invented by us scientists. Napalm is a liquid, flammable substance, the basis of it is gasoline, which added additives, the temperature and time of burning.
B-29 flew at an altitude of only a half or two miles and went just to the city. The night was moonlight, visibility is great, the Sumida river flowing through the city, was silvery in the moonlight, making her an excellent reference.
In those days the proportion of stone buildings in Tokyo was less than 5%, the rest are one – storey houses made of cardboard and bamboo, separated by narrow streets. Densely built up and densely populated city was a perfect target for the use of incendiary bombs. Not expecting the night RAID residents slept in their homes.
B-29
More than 300 thousand Napalm bombs caused fires in the vast area. The defenseless city was lit up like a giant bonfire. Soon flames over Tokyo climbed for several hundred metres. Simultaneous burning of hundreds of thousands of wooden buildings has led to the emergence of firestorm. Streams of hot air, whose temperature is above the centre of the burning of the city exceeded 1 000оС, rapidly rose up to the sky, calling from the suburbs so intense the flow of fresh air that it reached hurricane-force. The force of the wind was such that people were knocked down and thrown into the blazing Inferno.
A fire raged in a huge area, so to escape from this hell could only those who was on the edge, and then, if understood at once in what direction to run.
Many died not from fire, but from heat and suffocation, as hot air, in which besides in the flames of the fires burned oxygen to breathe. So a bomb shelter that could cover from explosions of high-explosive bombs, became graves for those who had hoped to find salvation.
In the square, equal to 41 km2, the fire burned 330 thousand houses, was destroyed 40% of the city.
According to official statistics the population of Tokyo in 1935 consisted of 6.4 million people in the 1940 7.4 million Instead of the expected increase, in 1945, after the bombing turned out to be only 3.5 million, i.e. 3.9 million less. The consequences of bombing the whole of this value can not be attributed, as many men of military age were in the ranks of the army and of the population before the disaster left the city.
Calculations show that by the beginning of 1945, Tokyo was about 5.8 million inhabitants. Napalm, subsequently, the international community has recognized weapons of mass destruction, destroyed 5,8-3,5=2.3 million people. The blow was inflicted on an unarmed and defenceless people, mainly women and children.
Tokyo. March 1945
The bombing resulted in such losses that the city’s population, achieved in 1940, was restored only in 1953. Therefore, to recover strength it took 13 years. And this despite the fact that in the postwar years the population grew much faster than in the pre-war: for 15 years, from 1925 to 1940 the population of Tokyo grew by 2.86 million, and from 1950 to 1965 – at 4.59 million
Conventional statistics says that the losses were much lower: 200 or even 80 thousand dead. The question then arises: how can we explain that the population of Tokyo has decreased by almost four million people and recovered over such long periods of time? This gives us grounds to disagree with these assessments. Calculations based on real data about the population of Tokyo, show that these estimates understate the loss of more than 10 times.
Curtis Lemay
General Curtis Lemay, on whose initiative on a large scale for the bombing of Tokyo and other cities were applied Napalm, later said: “I Think if we lost the war, then I would be tried as a war criminal.”
To the moral portrait of General you can add a characteristic touch. The destruction of Tokyo, Lemay gave the name: “Prayer house”, which speaks volumes about his cynicism.
The RAID on Tokyo was a monstrous catastrophe, the largest and terrible in its consequences action the U.S. air force, the superior effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Bombing of Tokyo – the massive one-time killing that knows the history.
When the question about the choice of targets for the atomic bombings, Tokyo was not considered, because the city was destroyed by Napalm in in March 1945.