#310 After the burning of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, Japanese civilians were burned to black charcoal

By early 1945, B-29 bombers carried out numerous daytime focused bombing raids on Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, but with little success. Instead, the U.S. Army Air Forces lost more than 150 B-29 bombers, and thousands of crew members shed blood in the sky.
The Japanese military government said that "Japan is the country of the emperor, protected by gods, and will not be easily invaded by foreign enemies." Therefore, Tokyo citizens did not have much fear of the American bombing in broad daylight; the production of the arsenal was not greatly affected, and the workers They worked overtime to produce various weapons, ammunition and munitions, which were continuously sent to the front line; some militarist fanatics even drank and had fun on the streets during the US bombing, looking up and laughing at the American bombers...
During the day on March 9, the streets of Tokyo were bustling with prosperity, and the next day, March 10, was the "Military Day" of Japanese militarism. This was an important holiday during the war. Since most people had relatives serving in the army, Tokyo residents greeted each other and hoped that their relatives far away on the front line would be safe. However, they never expected that they would be in trouble.
At 5:34 in the evening on March 9, Brigadier General Thomas Ball led 334 B-29 "Super Fortress" aircraft to take off from Saipan and Tinian Island airports in the Mariana Islands and pounce on Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo time At 0:15 on March 10, the two leading navigation aircraft of the B-29 fleet flew into the silent sky over downtown Tokyo and dropped two strings of napalm bombs in a cross pattern less than 500 meters above the ground. Two fire dragons were ignited, forming a huge cross, marking the bombing coordinates for the B-29 main fleet in the sky. Immediately afterwards, more than 300 B-29s filed down one after another, dropping more than 2,000 tons on Tokyo. Incendiary bombs. During this period, dozens of modified B-29s directly dropped dozens of tons of gasoline, and the originally scattered flames quickly gathered into a storm of flames.
For a time, the wind took advantage of the fire, and the fire helped the wind. Fire swept through the entire Tokyo, and everything was ignited. The ground temperature approached 1,000 degrees Celsius almost instantly. Trees, houses, and human bodies all spontaneously combusted, and even metal was melted. On the ground, the fire spread like a flood, and the fleeing people rushed back and forth. But the flames quickly licked them down and quickly turned them into burning charcoal. Some people jumped into ponds and rivers to survive, but the water in the ponds and rivers boiled under the high temperature, boiling them alive. The heat wave generated by the violent combustion even caused the B-29 bomber to bump up and down in the sky. The crew members later discovered that the originally silver belly of the aircraft had been smoked black.
After daybreak, the survivors were shocked by what they saw: most of the buildings were gone, the streets were unrecognizable, and only swaying cement pillars and broken reinforced concrete walls remained. One survivor recalled: "All the houses near my home became like melted sugar cubes. The river water has almost evaporated, and countless charred corpses are scattered on the dry river bed. Soldiers and police are piling up the dead bodies. Curled up in various postures. The air was filled with the smell of burning. Oh my God! At that moment, I doubted whether I was still alive."
After the burning of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, Japanese civilians were burned to black charcoal corpses. That night, about 300 U.S. B-29 bombers dropped 1,700 tons of incendiary bombs on Japan's largest city, killing about 100,000 people. It was the deadliest air raid in World War II.