During the night of March 9–10, 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force conducted “Operation Meetinghouse,” the firebombing of Tokyo. It was the most brutal air operation of World War II, more destructive than the bombing of Dresden, the London Blitz, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. Estimates suggest the firestorm caused by American bombs killed 80,000 to 100,000 civilians in that single night. Some one million people were left homeless.
Major General Curtis LeMay had assumed command of the Japanese home islands air war in January 1945, and rejected the strategy of precision bombing of military and industial targets in favor of the carpet bombing of civilian areas. Older readers may be familiar with LeMay’s name. He tried to institute the same type of wholesale civilian destruction during the Vietnam Conflict.
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