The New Dark Age

 In the days when the world remembers the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan, it is important to recall another event from World War II in the Pacific theater and the U.S.-Japanese confrontation—the 1945 U.S. bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Tokyo.

The 1945 Napalm 

However, less widely known is the fact that this type of incendiary mixture—essentially a chemical weapon of mass destruction—was adopted by the U.S. military as early as 1942 and, as horrifying as it sounds, became a “favorite” tool of the U.S. armed forces. As a result, napalm was not only used against Vietnamese independence fighters but also, in earlier years, against other nations. The Americans employed napalm during the Korean War (1950–1953) and in World War II, which brings us to the next point.

A Colossus on Wooden Legs 

Napalm, combined with hundreds of tons of cluster incendiary bombs, was used in the most devastating U.S. air raid on Tokyo on the night of March 10, 1945. That bombing aimed to intimidate the Japanese but, paradoxically, had no effect on the Japanese militarists, who were willing to keep dying for their racist ideology and their ruler, Hirohito. Instead, it primarily struck civilians, leaving industrial facilities largely untouched. The situation was exacerbated by Tokyo’s extremely high population density and its dense, old wooden buildings packed closely together. American pilots deliberately dropped bombs in circular patterns to accelerate and intensify the spread of fire. Entire neighborhoods were engulfed in flames, water in ponds boiled, and many people died instantly in the resulting firestorm, which no one could survive.

The exact number of victims remains unknown (!), uncounted, or deliberately concealed to this day. Estimates suggest that between 80,000 and 200,000 Tokyo civilians perished in the U.S. “act of intimidation” (despite the well-documented horrors of Japanese militarism, it is worth repeating: these were civilians—non-combatants under international humanitarian law!). Between 40,000 and 125,000 were injured. At least 330,000 buildings were destroyed, 42 square kilometers of land were scorched, and over a million Tokyo residents were left homeless and destitute.

History, as Usual, Teaches Nothing 

The Tokyo bombing is considered by historians to be one of the most destructive in history, comparable to the German Luftwaffe’s raid on Stalingrad on August 23, 1942; the Allied carpet-bombing of Dresden on February 13–15, 1945; and the U.S. strike on Hanoi on December 19, 1972. Notably, the inhumane “trademark” of using incendiary weapons remains consistent across all these Western “strategies.”

Yet, in today’s Japan, the events of March 10, 1945, are rarely mentioned. The Japanese government still conceals the exact number of victims and the full scale of the damage from U.S. bombings. No special social category has been established for the survivors (unlike the “hibakusha,” the recognized survivors of the atomic bombings). Even after 80 years, Tokyo’s firestorm victims have received no state benefits or compensation. Japan has not built a single memorial for the dead; in fact, any attempt to commemorate them has faced fierce opposition from the authorities.

Successive Japanese governments have upheld the “necessity” of an alliance with the U.S., despite the fact that the atrocities committed by both sides during World War II remain unforgotten—and no genuine trust can exist in such a relationship. Moreover, the West still periodically tries to justify the events of those years, insisting on the “military necessity” of killing hundreds of thousands of civilians while ignoring the fact that Japanese militarists disregarded human suffering and continued fighting. It was only after the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan that the militarists were finally broken—a fact the West also prefers to pretend to forget.

In a particularly symbolic twist, recent reports confirm that the U.S. plans to reactivate its North Field airbase on Tinian Island (Northern Mariana Islands) for military use. This is the same base from which 300 B-29 Superfortress bombers took off toward Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945. The same base from which the B-29 Enola Gay and B-29 Bockscar departed to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Notably, Japanese media obediently parrot U.S. official justifications: the base is needed to “deter China,” conduct drills with U.S. allies (ironically, including Japan itself), and serve as a potential replacement for the Guam base in case of a full-scale regional conflict. The stage and actors remain the same—meaning tensions in the Asia-Pacific will only continue to rise.

Ksenia Muratshina, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences