Japan Tokyo Firebombing

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Shizuyo Takeuchi, 94-year-old Tokyo raid survivor, shares her experience in front of a map of the areas damaged during the 1945 Tokyo Firebombing at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage on Feb. 24, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)ASSOCIATED PRESS

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TOKYO (AP) — More than 100,000 people were killed in a single night 80 years ago Monday in the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The attack, made with conventional bombs, destroyed downtown Tokyo and filled the streets with heaps of charred bodies.

The damage was comparable to the atomic bombings a few months later in August 1945, but unlike those attacks, the Japanese government has not provided aid to victims and the events of that day have largely been ignored or forgotten.

Elderly survivors are making a last-ditch effort to tell their stories and push for financial assistance and recognition. Some are speaking out for the first time, trying to tell a younger generation about their lessons.

Shizuyo Takeuchi, 94, says her mission is to keep telling the history she witnessed at 14, speaking out on behalf of those who died.

Red skies, charred bodies

On the night of March 10, 1945, hundreds of B-29s raided Tokyo, dumping cluster bombs with napalm specially designed with sticky oil to destroy traditional Japanese-style wood and paper homes in the crowded “shitamachi” downtown neighborhoods.

Takeuchi and her parents had lost their own home in an earlier firebombing in February and were taking shelter at a relative's riverside home. Her father insisted on crossing the river in the opposite direction from where the crowds were headed, a decision that saved the family. Takeuchi remembers walking through the night beneath a red sky. Orange sunsets and sirens still make her uncomfortable.

By the next morning, everything had burned. Two blackened figures caught her eyes. Taking a closer look, she realized one was a woman and what looked like a lump of coal at her side was her baby. “I was terribly shocked. ... I felt sorry for them," she said. “But after seeing so many others I was emotionless in the end."

Many of those who didn't burn to death quickly jumped into the Sumida River and were crushed or drowned.

More than 105,000 people were estimated to have died that night. A million others became homeless. The death toll exceeds those killed in the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing of Nagasaki.