Takiko Oyama was in jail during Operation Meetinghouse. She was a dissident that had been arrest for protesting against the horrors of World War II. Oyama was found in her cell; her hands were grabbing the bars. The prison was one of the few buildings in Tokyo not made of wood. The jail endured, Oyama suffocated. Takiko Oyama died a pacifist.
The Kaneko family died hugging each other in the family pond. They ran to the water when they first felt the smell of smoke and saw the flames on the horizon. They had no way of knowing that the American bombs were full of napalm—that generated so much heat that it boiled almost all of Tokyo's water. The Kaneko family had lost their older son in Iwo Jima a couple of days before.
Junji Okamura died running to the fire. He woke up with his wife screaming to the open window; they saw hell. Okamura tried to help. He ran through Tokyo carrying two buckets of water. Thanks to the heat and the kamikaze, Junji Okamura died in a fire whirl; he still had his two buckets in his hands.
Operation Meetinghouse lasted about three hours and killed between 90,000 and 120,000 people. Their histories should be preserved and remembered as a vital reminder that war is not glorious nor glamorous; war is abominable, dreadful, frightful and mournful.
THE END
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On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city. This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Great Tokyo Air Raid in Japan. Bombs dropped from 279 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers burned out much of eastern Tokyo. More than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people were killed, mostly civilians, and one million were left homeless, making it the most destructive single air attack in human history. The Japanese air and civil defenses proved largely inadequate; 14 American aircraft and 96 airmen were lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)
