At the end of World War II, Japan** ignored the Potsdam Proclamation, and then the United States sent bombers to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, thus speeding up the pace of Japan's surrender.
But what is less well known is that in the past few months, there was another city in Japan that had also been heavily bombed: Tokyo. But it wasn't the same as the atomic bombing a few months laterThe Great Bombing of TokyoAn incendiary air attack was used.
In just three months, the U.S. military carried out intensive and continuous bombing of 67 cities in Japan, especially Tokyo, and the survivors of the Tokyo bombing still felt palpitations when they recalled the scene at that time.
On March 9, 1945, the U.S. military began an all-out incendiary air attack on Tokyo, Japan, and 333 B-29 bombers took off from the airport under the command of 333 B-29 bombers, and they arrived over Tokyo the next day under the cover of night.
When the U.S. bombers flew to a low altitude of about 5,000-8,000 feet, they began to circle down to drop napalm.
Later, according to statistics, the air raid on Japan launched by the US military lasted about three hours, and a total of about 1,665 tons of napalm were thrown downward, and the temperature could reach more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit at the time, and in just a few hours, 16 square miles of land in Tokyo were burned to ashes.
After many years, Yoshitaka Kimura, a survivor of the bombing of Tokyo, can still feel the terrible feeling when he recalls the scene.
For most Tokyo citizens, the attack came very suddenly, although the situation was already tense at that time, but no one expected that the US military would choose to launch an offensive in Tokyo at midnight, so many people were still asleep when the siren sounded.
Yoshiki Kimura, then 7 years old, had a rare insomnia that night, after hearing the screeching siren, he hurried out of the house, and then saw the scene of countless incendiary bombs falling from the air under the flares, they quickly landed on the ground, and then exploded the flowers.
In just a moment, the city of Tokyo, which was still calm, was instantly covered by the sound of **, sirens, people's screams, and the sound of houses tearing and burning, and the familiar streets of those familiar houses were shrouded in fire.
The heat wave brought by the incendiary bomb** formed a strong convection with the cold air blowing from the sea, and the flames were suddenly pulled very high, and countless people were trapped in it, unable to get out, and finally burned alive.
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Statistical Mission later counted more than 100,000 people who died here, and the municipal government further estimated that the death toll reached 130,000.
Because the temperature was too high, the people on the ground couldn't help but jump into the river, hoping to alleviate the pain, but a large number of powerful incendiary bombs were also thrown into the river, surrounded by fire, and the water was a sea of fire, and the temperature of the river rose sharply, and some people were scalded to death in the river.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the bombing was a "barbecue", and afterwards, the American soldier who flew the bomber recalled the scene, saying that even when he was sitting in the driver's seat of the plane, he could smell the smell of burnt corpses coming from the air, and the smell was so obvious at 5,000 feet in the air that he tried to suppress the feeling of nausea.
This bombing caught Japan off guard, and their industry suffered tremendous damage, but Japan still did not give up, and the Japanese militarist war criminals did not stop the pace of aggression in the slightest.
In the three months that followed, the US bombing units carried out many low-altitude missions and bombed small and medium-sized cities in Japan, causing serious damage to Japanese cities and heavy casualties.
If you want to say why the United States hated Japan so much at that time, it has to be from the beginningPacific WarLet's start talking.
In 1941, Japan sent an aircraft carrier to attack Pearl Harbor of the United States, and the United States was caught off guard, and their Pacific Fleet was directly paralyzed, almost all of the main forces were destroyed, and more than 3,000 people were killed and wounded, so the United States had to give up the compromise policy with Japan, and the United States and Japan immediately entered a state of war, and the Pacific War broke out.
In June 1944, the United States obtainedBattle of the MarianasThis victory is of great significance, because in the Mariana area, if the US military implements a bombing strategy against Japan, then the attack range of its bombers can cover the entire Japan, and this is precisely the reason why the United States is trying its best to win the Mariana Sea Battle.
The victories in the Battle of the Mariana Sea and the Battle of Leyte Island marked the beginning of the gradual gain of the initiative in the Pacific theater by the American army, and at this time, Japan had suffered successive defeats in many theaters and could not continue the war.
In order to avoid the landing operation, the United States decided to send its air force to start bombing Japan, hoping to make Japan lose its combat capability and force Japan to surrender as soon as possible.
Initially, the bombing was carried out under Hansel's command, and in 1944 he sent B-29 bombers from the Marianas to prepare for an attack on Tokyo, Japan.
However, the heavy fuel on the plane made it impossible for the plane to reach Tokyo, and the plan had to be temporarily shelved due to the typhoon, and the plane took off a week later, but this time the bombing had little effect and did little real damage to Tokyo.
Later, the U.S. military made many attempts, but because of the influence of jet air over Japan, Hansel's precision bombing campaign was repeatedly stranded until January 1945Curtis. Li MeiAfter taking over Hansel's position, things took a turn for the better, and the name Li Mei became a terrible existence in the memory of the Japanese.
In the past, the air raids on Tokyo were carried out during the day, and precision bombing was carried out, but the results proved to be not significant, so Li Mei began to decisively change his strategy.
The decision to use incendiary bombs was based on the previous bombing strategy of the Japanese invaders against Chongqing, and then decided to use napalm for fire attack.
In order to avoid the Japanese army's prevention and control forces, Li Mei set the bombing time at night. In order to allow the plane to carry more napalm, Li Mei ordered the machine gun on the plane to be removed, and to carry less ammunition to reduce the weight of the aircraft.
He first sent 174 bombers to begin experimental bombing on February 23, 1945, this time making Tokyo about 2Fifty-six square kilometers of buildings were burned down, and this experiment proved that this solution was feasible.
The all-out bombing of Tokyo launched on March 9 made Tokyo ** miserable, 2590,000 houses were destroyed, tens of thousands of people died, and the total number of victims reached 890,000.
After this bombing, there were many remarks against Japanese militarism in Japan, and the people were more and more dissatisfied with the emperor and the emperor, which made Japan have to consider the issue of surrender.
A Japanese expert on ancient Japanese history commented on the matter:It greatly affected the will of the Japanese people to fight and made the Japanese people lose hope for victory.
However, the inferiority of the Japanese nation in their bones makes most of them unwilling to admit this history, and when they fail at a terrible price, they grovel in the face of the strong, pretend to be welcome, and turn a blind eye to their own scars.
The Emperor of Japan and ** are like that.
Don't look at the great damage caused by the bombing of Tokyo, countless people died and countless buildings were burned down. But when everything has calmed down, Japan** has not taken any action to commemorate the people who died in the bombing.
They acted as if it had never happened, ** and the public was so indifferent that only the survivors still remembered it, and they did not dare to forget that they raised funds to build their own memorial.
The American magazine Time not only called this bombing of Li May was"The dream has come true"., and said more radically:Cities in Japan should be burned like autumn leaves.
Japan has exchanged its sacrifice for the opportunity to stand behind the United States, and from then on, it will not dare to slack off in the slightest when it fights wherever it is directed.
In the past few days, Japan has made a lot of noise about the discharge of Fukushima nuclear sewage into the sea, and the United States, while supporting Japan's discharge into the sea, has reduced its imports of Japanese goods.
Regardless of the cries of the masses and the warnings of China, Japan only wants to drag other countries to sink together, and in order to make it cost-effective, they do not hesitate to make the whole world pay for it, and gamble on the health of all mankind, and the history of the crimes they have committed will not be forgotten.
We hate war and yearn for peace, but sometimes war is a necessary means to achieve peace, and for some countries, they will sit down and listen to you only when they are afraid. And as long as there is a war, it will always be the people at the bottom who will suffer, just like Japan, who can ignore the cries of the masses for their own interests, and unscrupulously make those degrading actions, when Japanese militarism is destroyed, when Japan will be saved.