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戦後70年、東京大空襲に関する記事
      
   (2015.3.10)
おしゃべり鳥 長文読解の練習で、こちらのページに来られた方もいるかもしれませんが、ここでは、2015年3月10日のジャパンタイムスの記事、「無視されてきた、第2次世界大戦の日本の都市部に対する米軍の大空襲」を次の順で紹介します。
☆ページ内リンク☆
*長文読解の練習をする方へ

1)東京大空襲についての記事を読んで、考えさせられたこと。
その惨禍を伝える公の資料館が東京にないことについての私の考え。
(英文を先に考えたので、日本語は英語の意訳をつけました。)

2)英字新聞ジャパン・タイムスの記事
Deadly WWII U.S. firebombing raids on Japanese cities largely ignored"

3)上の記事の日本語訳など (段落別)
スラッシュリーディング・単語や熟語の説明・直訳
 区切り線

《関連記事》
Survivor seeks neighborly ties in Nihonbashi
  The Yomiuri Shimbun/ March 10, 2015
↑解説は付けていませんが、日本橋で近隣の手がかりを今でも求め続けている生存者のお話です。

Tokyo air raids much more than an easily fixed toothache
  Mainichi Japan/ March 10, 2015


☆関連ページへのリンク☆
《第二次世界大戦・関連》
外部リンク
Bombing of Tokyo (Wikipedia) 

外部リンク東京大空襲 (ウィキペディア)

外部リンクNHKスペシャル 「戦慄の記録インパール」
  (私のブログの戦争関連記事/日本語のみ)

外部リンク
 「前衛書道の草分け・井上有一」の書の紹介ブログです。

外部リンク小田桐正一 戦地からの便り
 2020年8月11日、読売新聞で紹介されていた「戦地の父、家族を思う142通」の記事でみつけたサイト。父正一(まさかず)さんが、陸軍の下級将校として1941年から1945年2月まで、ベトナム、ビルマ(現ミャンマー)などを転戦しながら、家族に送り続けた手紙を、長男の一良(かずよし)(84)さんが、現代仮名遣いの読み下し文も添えて公開されています。
正一さんは、召集前は経済学者であり、現・兵庫県立大学の教授。手紙には絵心のある戦友に書いてもらったパゴダのイラストなども添えられています。妻子を思い、「紀行文」の趣漂うはがきを書いていた正一さんが、銃撃されて命を落とす。貴重な形見です。

外部リンク未来につなぐひばくの記憶プロジェクト
 2020年8月14日、読売新聞で紹介されていたNPO「ノーモア・ヒバクシャ記憶遺産を継承する会」による、被爆者の生々しい体験談のデジタルアーカイブ。

長文読解を練習する方へ:

1)東京大空襲についての記事を読んで、考えさせられたこと。…私の書いた文で読みやすいかと思います。意訳のみ添えています。

2)英字新聞ジャパン・タイムスの記事…英字新聞記事のみ、そのまま載せています。スラッシュリーディングで速読できますか?しっかり文の構造がとらえられると、多少理解できない単語があっても、読み進められると思います。まず、辞書を使わないで読み、大体の内容をつかんでみてください。

3)上の記事の日本語訳など (段落別)…スラッシュリーディングと、その直訳です。あやふやな箇所がありましたら、確認してみてください。

 リンク翻訳と速読の違い→ハイレベルな英会話力取得へ



目印関連サイト:

外部リンク東京大空襲・戦災資料センター (民営/江東区北砂)
The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage(Private Museum, not public)
↑こちらは、民立・民営の資料センターで、公営ではありません。


外部リンク平和祈念展示資料館(総務省委託/新宿住友ビル)
↑入館無料、戦後強制抑留者、引揚者などに関係する資料展示(口コミより



1)***My Opinion*** (意見) 

Do you know where the peace monument to remember victims of the Great Tokyo Air Raid? There is no public museum telling us the ravages of the Air Raid. What do you think about it?
(Mar. 27, 2015)
the ravages=~べッジ=損害、惨事

東京大空襲犠牲者を追悼する平和記念碑がどこにあるかご存知ですか? 空襲の被害を私達に伝えてくれる公立の資料館はありません。それについてどう思われますか?
(2015年3月27日)

I was from Tokyo and I was graduated from the high school standing just about 2km away from the monument. To tell the truth, however, I'd never visited it in my school days. I visited it for the first time only two years ago. Recently I had chances to read about the Great Tokyo Air Raid and thought I should have visited it more earlier.

私は、東京出身で、(平和)記念碑から約2キロほどにある高校を卒業しました。しかしながら、実を言うと、私は学生時代、そこを一度も訪れたことがないのです。私がそこを初めて訪れたのは、ほんの2年前の事でした。最近、東京大空襲について、読む機会があり、もっと早くに訪れておくべきだったと思っています

The peace monument is in Yokoamicho Park, Sumida Ward. There is a memorial museum in the park. But the museum is mostly related to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. There is no public museum telling us the ravages of the Great Tokyo Air Raid.

平和記念碑は、墨田区の横網町公園にあります。公園内には、復興記念館はありますが、その記念館は、殆ど、1923年に起きた関東大震災に関するものです。東京大空襲の被害を伝える公立の資料館はありません。


A memorial service for the victims of the Raid has been held every year in the Memorial Hall beside the peace monument, and finally on the seventieth anniversary in 2015, the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended it for the first time in 70 years as an incumbent prime minister,…isn't it too lete?
incumbent=インンベントゥ=現職の

空襲の犠牲者の追悼式は、平和記念碑のそばにある慰霊館で、毎年執り行なわれてきました。そしてついに、2015年の70周年行事に、安倍晋三首相が現職の総理大臣として70年で初めて《70年ぶりに》参列しました。…遅すぎませんか?


On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred and it killed about 20,000 people. We saw the dreadful Tsunami repeatedly on TV soon after the quake and found that incredible things were happening.


2011年3月11日に、東日本大震災が起き、約2万人の方々がなくなりました。私達は、揺れの後まもなく、テレビで繰り返し怖ろしい津波を見、信じられないことが起きていると知りました。


Now I notice that more than 100,000 people were killed in just one day on March 10, 1945 and the number of victims was much larger than that of the Great East Japan Earthquake. There live survivors of the Air Raid even now. It was not the event of old days. Recently it was found that 10% of the victims were 1-4 years old. Female victims of 20s-30s were more than two times as many as male 20s-30s (according to Yomiuri-shinbun of Mar 7, 2015).

今、私は、10万人以上の方々が、1945年3月10日のたった1日で亡くなり、その数というのは、東日本大震災より、ずっと多かったということを知りました。今も、大空襲を生き残った方々が生きておられます。大昔の出来事ではないのです。最近、犠牲者の10%が1~4才であったということがわかりました。20~30代の女性の犠牲者は、20~30代の男性の犠牲者の2倍以上ということです(2015年3月7日、読売新聞より)。

I think it is a pity that there is no public memorial museum relating to the Great Tokyo Air Raid. I haven't considered deeply what happened in Tokyo on March 10, 1945 before. The dead toll of citizens was as heavy as that of Okinawa War (Mar 26 - June 20 or 23, 1945), Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki (August 9, 1945).
the dead toll=~ウる=(事故・災害による)死者

私は、東京大空襲に関する公立の記念館がないことを残念に思います。私は以前、19454年3月10日に東京で何が起きたのか、深く考えてきませんでした。一般市民の死者は、沖縄戦(1945年3月26日から6月20日または23日)や広島の原爆(1945年8月6日)や長崎の原爆(1945年8月9日)より多いのです。


I wonder why the Japanese government didn't stop the war soon after the Great Tokyo Air Raid. If Japanese citizens had got the correct information about the damage of the raid, could they have permitted the government to continue the war? If the Japanese government had deceided to stop the war then, they could have avoided tragic Okinawa War and two Atomic Bombings. I know my idea is just a dream and the mere modern way of thinking. A democratic idea cannot have been allowed then.

なぜ日本政府は、東京大空襲のすぐ後に戦争を辞めなかったのかと思います。もしあの時、日本市民が大空襲の被害についての正確な情報を持っていたら、政府が戦争を続けることを認めていたでしょうか。もし日本政府があの時戦争を終える決定をしていたら、悲劇的な沖縄戦と2つの原爆を避けられたのではないでしょうか。 (リンク仮定法過去完了:過去のありえない仮定を表現する文法)私の考えは、ただの夢想で、ただの現代的な考え方だとわかっています。民主的な考えは、あの時は認められたはずがないでしょうから。(cannot have+過去分詞/過去の否定的確信/~したはずがない)

There are so many and various ways of thinking about the World War II. They say that's the reason why the public memorial museum relating to the Great Tokyo Air Raid hasn't been built yet. However the truth is unchangeable. Tokyo was and is the biggest city in Japan. I wish, like Hiroshima, there were a public museum in Tokyo telling us the ravages of the Great Tokyo Air Raid now. I think the Tokyo Metropolitan Government should offer many people a chance to reconsider the vanity of war and the value of lives.

第2次世界大戦については、とても多くの様々な考え方があります。それが、いまだに東京大空襲についての公共の資料館が建てられない理由であると言われています。しかしながら、事実を変えることはできません。東京は、以前も今も、日本で最大の都市です。広島のように、東京大空襲の戦禍を私達に伝える公共の資料館が東京にないことが残念でなりません
(仮定法過去) 都庁は、多くの人々に、戦争の空しさと命の価値を再考するチャンスを、提供するべきと思います。


 地図




2)Deadly WWII U.S. firebombing raids
   on Japanese cities largely ignored

       AP Mar 10, 2015 (from the Japan Times)

It was not Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but inn many ways, including lives lost, it was just as horrific.

On March 10, 1945, U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo in the dead of night, dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm. A fifth of Tokyo was left a vast smoldering expanse of charred bodies and rubble.

Today, a modest floral monument in a downtown park honors the spirits of the 105,400 confirmed dead, many interred in common graves.

It was the deadliest conventional air raid ever, worse than Nagasaki and on a par with Hiroshima. But the attack, and similar ones that followed in more than 60 other Japanese cities, have received little attention, eclipsed by the atomic bombings and Japan's postwar rush to rebuild.

Haruyo Nihei, just 8 when the bombs fell, was among many survivors who kept silent. A half-century passed before she even shared her experiences with her own son.

"Our parents would just say, `That's a different era,' "Nihei said. "They wouldn't talk about it. And I figured my own family wouldn't understand."

Now, as their numbers dwindle, survivors are determined to tell their stories while they still can.

Where earlier raids targeted aircraft factories and military facilities, the Tokyo firebombing was aimed largely at civilians, in places including Tokyo's downtown area known as 'shitamachi', where people lived in traditional wood and paper homes at densities sometimes exceeding 100,000 people per square mile.

"There were plenty of small factories, but his area was chosen specifically because it was easy to burn," says historian Masahiko Yamabe, who was born just months after World War II ended.

Another departure from earlier raids: the bombers flew low.

"It was as if we could reach out ant touch the planes, they looked so big," said Yoshitaka. Kimura, whose family's toy store in downtown Tokyo's Asakusa district was destroyed. "The bombs were raining down on us. Red, and black, that's what i remember most."

Nihei , now 78, was mesmerized as she watched from a railway embankment.
"It was a blazing firestorm. I saw a baby catch fire on its mother's back, and she couldn't put out the fire. I saw a horse being led by its owner. The horse balked and the cargo on its back caught fire, hen its tail, and it burned alive, as the owner just stood there and burned with it," she said.

Fire fighter Isamu Kase was on duty at a train parts factory. He jumped onto a pump truck when the attack began, knowing the job was impossible.

"It was a hellish frenzy, absolutely horrible. People were just jumping into the canals to escape the inferno," said Kase, 89. He said he survived because he did not jump in the water, but his burns were so severe he was in and out of hospital for 15 years.

Split-second choices like that determined who lived and who died.

Kimura, a 7-year-old, escaped the flames as he was blown into the entrance of a big department store while running toward the Sumida River, where tens of thousands of people died: burned, crushed,
drowned or suffocated in the firestorm.

Masaharu Ohtake, then 13, fled his family's noodle shop with a friend. Turned back by firefighters, they headed toward Tokyo Bay and again were ordered back. The boys crouched in a factory yard, waiting as flames consumed their neighborhood.

"We saw a fire truck heaped with a mountain of bones. It was hard to understand how so many bodies could be piled up like that," said Ohtake.

After about two hours and 40 minutes, the B-29s left.

Survivors speak of the hush as dawn broke over a wasteland of corpses and debris, studded by chimneys of bathhouses and small factories. Police photographer Koyo Ishikawa captured the carnage of charred bodies piled like blackened mannequins, tiny ones lying beside them.

"It was as if the world had ended," said Nihei, whose father sheltered her under his body, as others piled on top and were burned and suffocated. All her family survived.

Michiko Kiyooka, a 21-year-old government worker living in the Asakusa district, survived by hiding under a bridge.

"When I crawled out I was so cold, so I was warming myself near one of the piles that was still smoldering. I could see an arm. I could see nostrils. But I was numb to that by then," she said. "The smell is one that will never leave me."

From January 1944 until August 1945, the U.S. dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on Japanese cities, according to the U.S.Strategic Bombing Survey. It estimated that 333,000 people were killed, including the 80,000 killed in the Aug 6 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack and 40,000 in Nagasaki three days later. Other estimates are significantly higher. Fifteen million of the 72 million Japanese were left homeless.

The bombing campaign set a military precedent for targeting civilian areas that persisted into the Korean and Vietnam wars and beyond. But the non-atomic attack have been largely overlooked.

"Both governments, the press, media, radio, even novelists . . decided the crucial story was the atomic bomb," said Mark Selden, a Cornell University history professor. "This allowed them to avoid addressing some very mportant questions."

Survivors of the Tokyo firebombing feel their pain has been forgotten, by history and by the government. After the war, only veterans and victims of the atomic bombings received special support.

"We civilians had no weapons and no strength to fight," Kiyooka said. "We were attacked and got no compensation. I am very dissatisfied with how the government handled this."

No specific government agency handles civilian survivors of firebombings or keeps their records, because there is no legal basis for that, said Manabu Oki at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

Yamabe, the historian, said authorities "are reluctant to acknowledge civilian suffering from the wartime leaders' refusal to end the war earlier."

"If they don't disclose such data, it can't be discussed. If the victims remain anonymous then there's less pressure for compensation," said Yamabe, a researcher at the privately funded Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages Resource Center, Japan's main source of information about the firebombings.

Some survivors now refuse to be anonymous.

Nihei often travels from the distant suburbs to the Tokyo Air Raid Center to share her story with students and other visitors.

Years ago, Ohtake began walking the city to draw up guide maps of areas destroyed by the bombings - maps the resource center now uses.

"The United States went too far with the firebombing, but I don't quite understand why the Japanese government and the rest of the Japanese don't talk about this very much," he said.

"We are not just statistics. I don't think we'll still be around for the 80th anniversary," Ohtake said. "So the 70th anniversary is pretty much the last chance for us to speak up."




3)Deadly WWII U.S. firebombing raids /
   on Japanese cities/ largely ignored

       AP Mar 10, 2015 (from the Japan Times)
firebomg=焼夷弾(で攻撃する) 
raid
=イドゥ=急襲、攻撃

物凄い、第2次世界大戦の米軍の焼夷弾攻撃/日本の都市部に対する/大部分は無視されてきた(攻撃)(「ignored」は「raids」にかかるリンク過去分詞

It was not Hiroshima or Nagasaki,/ but in many ways,/ including lives lost,/ it was just as horrific
.
horrific=ィック=恐ろしい

それは、広島でも長崎でもなかった。/しかし、多くの点で/失われた命を含め/それは、まさに同じくらい恐ろしかった。

On March 10, 1945, /U.S. B-29 bombers flew over Tokyo/ in the dead of night,/ dumping massive payloads of cluster bombs/ equipped with a then-recent invention: napalm.
A fifth of Tokyo/ was left a vast smoldering expanse /of charred bodies and rubble.

dump=~をどっさり落とす 
payloads=
有効搭載量  
cluster bomb=
クラスター爆弾(破片爆弾と爆発性榴弾などから成る)
napalm=
パーム=ナパーム弾 
smolder=
くすぶる 
expanse=
イクスパンス=広がり 
char=
~を炭にする
body=
死体(=corpse)  
rubble=
ブる=瓦礫、残骸、がらくたの山

1945年3月10日に/アメリカのB-29爆撃機が、東京の上空を飛んでいた/真夜中に/大量に搭載されたクラスター爆弾をどっさり落としながら。/当時最新の発明品であるナパーム弾を装備した(クラスター爆弾を)。
東京の5分の1は/広範にくすぶる広がりが残された/炭にされた死体と瓦礫の(広がりが)。→東京の1/5は、炭になった死体と瓦礫の焦土と化した。


Today,/ a modest floral monument /in a downtown park /honors the spirits /of the 105,400 confirmed dead, /many interred in common graves.

honor=~に敬意を表す、礼拝する
inter=
イン=~を埋葬する(=bury) 

今日、/控えめな(それほど大きくなく)、花で覆われた記念碑が/下町の公園にある(記念碑が)/魂を礼拝している/105,400人の確認された死者の(魂を)/多くが共同墓地に埋葬されているが(←リンク独立分詞構文で、節にすると、and many of the dead were interred in common graves.=そして死者の多くは共同墓地に埋葬された。)

It was the deadliest conventional air raid ever, /worse than Nagasaki and on a par with Hiroshima.
But /the attack, /and similar ones /that followed in more than 60 other Japanese cities, /have received little attention, /eclipsed by the atomic bombings and Japan's postwar rush to rebuild.
conventional=コンンショナる=型にはまった、因習的な、《軍》在来型の
deadly=《er型の形容詞》致命的な、痛烈な 《副》ひどく
on a par with= ~と同等の
eclipse=イクゥプスゥ=光の消滅、(太陽の・月)食、~を覆い隠す

それは今までで、もっとも致命的な空爆でした。/長崎よりもひどく、広島と同等の(空爆)。
しかし/その攻撃は/(そして同じような攻撃は/他の60以上の日本の都市で続いた(攻撃は))/殆ど注目を受けてきませんでした/原爆と日本の戦後の復興するあわただしさに覆い隠されてしまったので。

(読みにくい場合は、the attack, and~cities, have receivedのカンマで区切られたで区切られた部分and~citiesまでを省略して読むと読みやすい。eclipsedからは分詞構文、,eclipsed=because they were eclipsed~)


Haruyo Nihei, /just 8 when the bombs fell, /was among many survivors/ who kept silent.
A half-century passed/ before she even shared her experiences with her own son.

ニヘイ ハルヨは/爆弾が落ちた時たった8歳でしたが/多くの生き残った人たちの中にいました/沈黙を守った(生き残った人たちの中に)。
半世紀が過ぎました/彼女が彼女自身の息子と彼女の体験をずっと分かち合う前に。→半世紀経ってやっと、体験を息子に話せるようになりました。

"Our parents would just say, /`That's a different era,' /"Nihei said.
"They wouldn't talk about it.
And I figured /my own family wouldn't understand."

「私の両親は、ただ言っていました。/『あれは違う時代だ』」と/ニヘイは言いました。
「彼らはそれについて話そうとしませんでした。/そして私は思いました/私自身の家族は理解しようとしていないと。」


Now, /as their numbers dwindle,/ survivors are determined to tell their stories /while they still can
.
dwindle=ドゥンドる=だんだん少なくなる(=decrease)
determine to do=~することを決意する(=decide to do)
be determined to do=~することを固く決心している

今/彼らの数が少なくなるについて/生き残った人たちは彼らの話をすることを固く決心しています。/彼らがまだできる間に(話すことを)。

Where earlier raids targeted aircraft factories and military facilities, /the Tokyo firebombing was aimed largely at civilians,/ in places including Tokyo's downtown area/ known as 'shitamachi',/ where people lived in traditional wood and paper homes/ at densities/ sometimes exceeding 100,000 people per square mile.
where=《接》(対照・範囲)~するのに
aircraft=アクラふトゥ=航空機(総称)、航空の
firebomb=焼夷弾(しょういだん)、(~を)焼夷弾で攻撃する
largely=主として(chiefly)、大部分は(mostly)
civilian=スィりアンヌ=(軍人・消防署員などに対して)一般市民、民間人
density=デンスィティ=密度 (high densities=高い人口密度)

初期の空襲は飛行機の工場や軍需工場を狙っていましたが、/東京の焼夷弾攻撃は主として民間人に向けられていました。/東京の下町の地域を含む場所で/「したまち」として知られる(地域で)/そしてそこに、人々は伝統的な木と紙の家に住んでいました。/密度で/時には1平方マイルあたり十万人を超す(密度で)。

"There were plenty of small factories, /but his area was chosen/ specifically because it was easy to burn,"/ says historian Masahiko Yamabe,/ who was born/ just months after World War II ended.

「たくさんの小さな工場がありました。/しかし彼の地域が選ばれました。/特にその地域が燃えやすかったために。」歴史家のヤマベ マサヒコは言います。/そして、彼は生まれました。/第二次世界大戦が終わったほんの数か月後に。

Another departure from earlier raids: the bombers flew low.
departure=出発、発展、新方針
bomber=
ボマー=爆撃機、爆撃犯人

区切り線
*以下、読みやすい文なので、スラッシュリーディングのスラッシュの入れ方のみ記載。あくまで参考と思ってください。

"It was /as if we could reach out ant touch the planes, /they looked so big,"/ said Yoshitaka. Kimura, /whose family's toy store in downtown Tokyo's Asakusa district/ was destroyed.
"The bombs were raining down on us.
Red, and black, /that's what I remember most."

Nihei, now 78, /was mesmerized/ as she watched from a railway embankment.
"It was a blazing firestorm.
I saw a baby/ catch fire on its mother's back, /and she couldn't put out the fire.
I saw a horse/ being led by its owner.
The horse balked/ and the cargo on its back/ caught fire,/ hen its tail,/ and it burned alive, /as the owner just stood there/ and burned with it,"/ she said.

Fire fighter Isamu Kase/ was on duty at a train parts factory.
He jumped onto a pump truck/ when the attack began,/ knowing the job was impossible.

"It was a hellish frenzy,/ absolutely horrible.
People were just jumping into the canals/ to escape the inferno,"/ said Kase, 89.
He said/ he survived/ because he did not jump in the water, //but his burns were so severe/ he was in and out of hospital for 15 years.


Split-second choices like that/ determined who lived/ and who died.

Kimura, a 7-year-old,/ escaped the flames /as he was blown into the entrance of a big department store/ while running toward the Sumida River,/ where tens of thousands of people died: /burned, crushed,
drowned or suffocated in the firestorm.

Masaharu Ohtake, then 13,/ fled his family's noodle shop with a friend.
Turned back by firefighters,/ they headed toward Tokyo Bay/ and again were ordered back.
The boys crouched in a factory yard, /waiting as flames consumed their neighborhood.
"We saw a fire truck/ heaped with a mountain of bones.
It was hard to understand/ how so many bodies could be piled up like that,"/ said Ohtake.
After about two hours and 40 minutes, /the B-29s left.


Survivors speak of the hush/ as dawn broke over a wasteland of corpses and debris,/ studded by chimneys of bathhouses and small factories.
Police photographer Koyo Ishikawa/ captured the carnage of charred bodies/ piled like blackened mannequins,/ tiny ones lying beside them.

"It was as if the world had ended,"/ said Nihei, /whose father sheltered her under his body,/ as others piled on top/ and were burned and suffocated.
All her family survived.

Michiko Kiyooka, a 21-year-old government worker living in the Asakusa district,/ survived by hiding under a bridge.

"When I crawled out/ I was so cold,/ so I was warming myself near one of the piles/ that was still smoldering.
I could see an arm.
I could see nostrils.
But I was numb to that by then,"/ she said.
"The smell is one/ that will never leave me."

From January 1944 until August 1945,/ the U.S. dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on Japanese cities,/ according to the U.S.Strategic Bombing Survey.
It estimated/ that 333,000 people were killed,/ including the 80,000 killed in the Aug 6 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack /and 40,000 in Nagasaki three days later.
Other estimates are significantly higher.
Fifteen million of the 72 million Japanese/ were left homeless.

The bombing campaign set a military precedent/ for targeting civilian areas/ that persisted into the Korean and Vietnam wars and beyond.
But the non-atomic attack/ have been largely overlooked.

"Both governments, the press, media, radio, even novelists . . decided/ the crucial story was the atomic bomb,"/ said Mark Selden, a Cornell University history professor.
"This allowed them to avoid/ addressing some very mportant questions."

Survivors of the Tokyo firebombing/ feel their pain has been forgotten,/ by history and by the government.
After the war, /only veterans and victims of the atomic bombings/ received special support.

"We civilians had no weapons and no strength/ to fight," /Kiyooka said.
"We were attacked and got no compensation.
I am very dissatisfied with/ how the government handled this."

No specific government agency/ handles civilian survivors of firebombings/ or keeps their records,/because there is no legal basis for that,/ said Manabu Oki at the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

Yamabe, the historian, said/ authorities "are reluctant to acknowledge civilian/ suffering from the wartime leaders' refusal/ to end the war earlier."

"If they don't disclose such data,/ it can't be discussed.
If the victims remain anonymous/ then there's less pressure for compensation,"/ said Yamabe, /a researcher at the privately funded Tokyo Air Raid and War Damages Resource Center,/ Japan's main source of information about the firebombings.

Some survivors now refuse to be anonymous.

Nihei often travels from the distant suburbs to the Tokyo Air Raid Center/ to share her story with students and other visitors.

Years ago, /Ohtake began walking the city/ to draw up guide maps of areas/ destroyed by the bombings /- maps/ the resource center now uses.

"The United States went too far with the firebombing,/ but I don't quite understand/ why the Japanese government and the rest of the Japanese/ don't talk about this very much," he said.

"We are not just statistics.
I don't think/ we'll still be around for the 80th anniversary," Ohtake said.
"So the 70th anniversary is pretty much the last chance/ for us to speak up."


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Survivor seeks neighborly ties in Nihonbashi
  The Yomiuri Shimbun  10:30 pm, March 10, 2015

The Yomiuri Shimbun Kosuke Nakano, 83, a resident of the Nihonbashi district, Tokyo, has witnessed huge changes in the local landscape since the massive bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, left about 100,000 people dead.

The district in Chuo Ward, which was called Nihonbashi Ward at the time, was almost completely reduced to rubble. Today, the district has regained the bustle it saw before the bombing, after large-scale redevelopment.

Nakano runs a wholesale store for Binchotan-brand charcoal in the Koamicho area of the Nihonbashi district.

“The landscape has become magnificent. As the next step, I want to revive the same kind of ties between the township and residents that existed in prewar years and during the war,” he said.

A total of 1,275 people were killed in the bombing of the area, including hundreds who fled into Meijiza theater when the building was destroyed.

At that time, Nakano was 13 years old. Just after the bombing, he returned from Konosu, Saitama Prefecture, where he had been evacuated, and found that his house had been burned down.

He crossed Shin-Ohashi bridge over Sumidagawa river and headed for the school where he had been enrolled before being evacuated.

When he entered Fukagawa Ward, in today’s Koto Ward, charred bodies were everywhere, including those of mothers wearing hoods for protection from flaming napalm and holding dead babies.

“I became emotionally drained and had no room for other feelings,” he said.

Around Nakano’s house there were lines of shops. They included a “kyojiya,” owned by a craftsman who repaired fusuma sliding doors and other furniture, a shop selling geta and a cooking oil shop.

In prewar years, neighbors used to help each other without a word when anyone had trouble.

But after the shops were destroyed by the bombing, many people left the district. Office buildings and condominiums were built on sites where shops once stood, and the friendly atmosphere peculiar to the area was lost.

Nakano took over the family business, and he has served as chairman of a federation of 15 neighborhood associations, including that of the Ningyocho area, for more than 10 years.

The Nihonbashi district was rebuilt after it was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the bombing in 1945. Now the district has become one of Tokyo’s largest business districts following the bubble economy period in the late 1980s and redevelopment.

The number of local residents who participate in local events, such as gathering to make rice cakes and Bon Odori dances, has decreased. But local residents are attempting to form new ties among people in the Nihonbashi district.





Tokyo air raids much more than an easily fixed toothache
March 10, 2015(Mainichi Japan)

"The tongue always returns to the sore tooth" -- an idiom referring to the way in which thoughts keep returning to whatever is bothering oneself and unwittingly slip out -- may explain a foreword to the United States military's 21st Bomber Command's Tactical Mission Report for the March 10, 1945 air raid on Tokyo.

"It is noteworthy that the object of these attacks was not to bomb indiscriminately civilian populations," it reads, with an underline under the word "not."

Forewords were rare in tactical mission reports, and even rarer were underlines. Someone's teeth must have really been hurting.

Or perhaps the idiom is more apt for a widely known statement by Curtis LeMay, the U.S. general who directed the firebombing of Tokyo. He said he believed he would've been tried as a war criminal if the U.S. had lost the war. Two years prior, the U.S. military had built models of Japanese residential areas in the desert and tested incendiary bombs on them, ultimately determining that the older districts of Tokyo were "optimal" targets for such weapons.

On the night of the firebombing, some residents in such "optimal" districts belatedly celebrated the March 3 Girls' Day festival with food they'd scrambled to procure, while others enjoyed reunions with children who'd temporarily returned from their evacuation destinations in the countryside to take school entrance exams. More than 1,600 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped in the Great Tokyo Air Raid, destroying the most densely populated area of the capital.

The fires that swept through the city did not discriminate, consuming young children as well as the elderly. Seventy years have passed since more than 100,000 died or went missing in that one night. Following the Tokyo air raid, the U.S. military used firebomb attacks on cities across the country, and the number of casualties soared.

Perhaps for those looking at the devastation from the sky, the "sore tooth" could easily be fixed with an underline in a foreword. But we on the ground must continue to pass on the stories and dashed dreams of the mothers and fathers who held crying children in their arms as the flames swallowed them. Lest we forget. ("Yoroku," a front-page column in the Mainichi Shimbun)











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