Surviving Tokyo bombing 80 years ago want a fee

Tokyo – More than 100,000 people were killed in one night before 80 years ago on Monday in the American fire category Tokyo, Japanese capital. Attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed in the center of Tokyo and filled the streets with a bunch of carbohyards.

The damage was comparable to the atomic bombing attacks a few months later in August 1945, but unlike these attacks, the Japanese government did not provide victims and events that day largely ignored or forgotten.

The older survivors invest the effort of the last ditch to apologize to their stories and press for financial assistance and recognition. Some are saying for the first time, trying to tell the younger generation about his hours.

Shizuyo Takeuchi, 94, says her mission is constantly speaking history she testified at 14, speaking on behalf of those who died.

On the night of March 1945. They were performed in Tokyo, Tokyo, throwing cluster bombs with an attack specifically designed with adhesive oil to destroy the traditional homosexuals in the settlement “Shitamachi” in the city center.

Takeuchi and her parents lost their own home in earlier vatribburbing in February and took over in the native coast of the house. Her father insisted on the crossing of the river in the opposite direction where the crowds were from, the decision that saved the family. Takeuchi remembers walking the nights below the red sky. Orange sunsets and sirens still make her uncomfortable.

The next morning everything has set fire. Two blackened figures caught her eyes. A closer look, she realized that one woman and what looked like a bunch of coal on her side her baby. “I was horribly shocked. … I was sorry for them,” she said. “But after I saw so many others, I was in the end I was without emotion.”

Many of those who did not burn to death quickly jumped into the River Sumida and were crushed or drowned.

It is estimated that more than 105,000 people died that night. A million others became a homeless person. The toll death exceeds those killed in 9. August 1945, atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

But Tokyo Firebombing has greatly encouraged two atomic bombings. And the fire for dozens of other Japanese cities were given even less attention.

The bombing occurred after the collapse of Japanese air and maritime defense after spending a series of former Japanese strongholds in the Pacific B-29 superform bombers to easily hit the main islands in Japan. In the United States, frustration is growing in the length of the war and the past of Japanese military crimes, such as March Death Bataan.

Ai Saatome has a house full of notes, photography and other materials who left her when he died at the age of 90 2022. Years. Her father, Katsumoto Saotome, was award-winning writer and Tokyo fire survivors. He collected the accounts of his peers to raise awareness of the civil death and the importance of peace.

Saotome says the feeling of urgency that her father and other survivors feel did not share among the younger generations.

Although her father published books about Tokyo Firebombing and his victim, passing through his raw materials gave her new perspectives and awareness of Japan’s aggression during the war.

Digitizes the material at the center of the Tokyo Raid and war damage, the museum that opened its father in 2002. years after the collection of records and attack artifacts.

“Our generation doesn’t know much about the experience (survivor) experience, but at least we can hear their stories and record their votes,” she said. “That is the responsibility of our generation.”

“In about 10 years, when we have a world in which no one remembers nothing (around this), I hope that these documents and records can help,” says Saithoms.

The post-war government ensured 60 trillion yen ($ 405 billion) to support for welfare with military veterans and bereaved families, and medical support to Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

Civilian victims of American fire products did not receive anything.

A group of survivors who want the government to recognize their suffering and financial assistance met earlier this month, renewing their demands.

No government agency processes civil survivors or keeps their records. Japanese courts rejected their claims for a fee of 11 million yen ($ 74,300), saying that citizens were to endure suffering in emergencies such as war. A group of representatives in 2020. She compiled a draft of a proposal by one-time payments to half a million ($ 3,380), but the plan was stopped for the opposition of some members of the ruling party.

“This year will be our last chance,” Yumi Yoshida said, who lost their parents and sister in bombing, at the meeting, referring to 80. The anniversary of the Japan World War I war.

10. March 1945, Reiko Muto, a former nurse, was still wearing a uniform and shoes on her bed. Muto jumps when she heard the siren air raids and rushed to the pediatric department where she was a student sister. With the lifters stopped because of the raid, it went up and down into a dimly lit staircase carrying infants to a basement gym for shelter.

Soon, the trucks of people started to arrive. They were taken to the basement and lined up “like the fish tuna in the market.” Many had serious burns and cried and passed the water. The screaming and smell of burned skin has long stayed with her.

Comforting them is the best she could do because of the lack of medical furniture.

When the war ended five months later, 15. August, she immediately thought: it was no longer meant to leave lights. She graduated studies and worked as a nurse to help children and teenagers.

“What we’ve been through, should never be repeated,” she says.