March 9, 1945

Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945)

USAAF firebombs Tokyo in the March 9–10 raid

Defensive guns and ammunition were stripped from many B-29s so they could carry more incendiaries — then they flew individually, at night, a few thousand feet over the city.

The bombs fell on the 10th

The mission straddles two dates. B-29s departed their Mariana Islands bases during 9 March 1945 and bombed Tokyo between roughly 12:05 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. Japanese time on 10 March — the local date of the attack, and the date Japan commemorates.

Of 325 B-29s airborne, 279 bombed the primary target, dropping 1,665 tons of incendiaries.

Under Major General Curtis LeMay's revised tactics they attacked individually at night and at low altitude, reversing the command's usual high-altitude daylight formation attack with high explosives.

A firestorm over Shitamachi

The designated target was a densely built section of eastern Tokyo containing homes, commercial buildings and many small workshops connected to war production — the uses were intermingled, not exclusively one or the other.

The incendiaries combined into a firestorm that overwhelmed firefighting and medical services and burned more than 16 square miles of the city. It destroyed 449 of 857 first-aid stations, 132 of 275 first-aid hospitals and 97 of 196 first-aid maternity hospitals.

By morning more than a million residents had lost their homes.

How many died is not settled

The figure of 100,000 is an estimate, not an enumeration. Japan's government cites 83,793 dead and 40,918 injured; broader estimates run from about 80,000 to more than 100,000.

The exact toll cannot be recovered: entire households died, records burned, and wartime population movements were large.

The raid was a radical intensification rather than a first: incendiary bombing had already been used in Europe, China and earlier attacks on Japan. Within days XXI Bomber Command struck Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe the same way.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1945-03-10.

What the sources leave uncertain

The mission straddled two dates: aircraft departed the Marianas on March 9, but the bombs fell in Tokyo after midnight on March 10. The sheet uses March 10 because that is the local date of the attack and Japan’s commemoration.
The exact death toll cannot be recovered because entire households died, records burned, and wartime population movements were substantial. Credible official and historical estimates range from about 80,000 to more than 100,000.
Sources variously count aircraft assigned, launched, airborne, reaching Tokyo, or bombing the primary target. Those categories should not be mixed.