Eighty years later, the scars of the last American firebombing of a Japanese city remain — on the skin of a man who still lives mere yards from where hundreds died, on the surface of a statue of a revered Buddhist monk, and in the minds of those whose city was turned to ash in a matter of hours.
Almost 90 US B-29 bombers dropped about 6,000 tons of jellied gasoline — napalm — on Kumagaya, Japan, on the night of August 14-15, 1945. The resulting fires, burning at 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius, killed at least 260 people, injured 3,000 and left, by some estimates, almost 75% of the city of 47,000 in ruins.The last in the string of US warplanes that created that firestorm left the skies over Kumagaya less than 12 hours before the voice of Emperor Hirohito would be broadcast announcing Japan’s unconditional surrender.
