Passing down the bombing of Yokohama through the accounts of those who survived

[yuiyoshida]

Nobuharu Takeda, 85, recounts the U.S. bombing of Yokohama that took place in the spring of 1945. (Mainichi)

YOKOHAMA -- Upon re-reading the accounts left behind by family members on the U.S. bombing of this city 70 years ago, Nobuharu Takeda, an 85-year-old carpenter living in this city's Kohoku Ward, reaffirmed his resolve not to let the bombing fade from public memory.

Takeda's mother, Sayo, was the first-born daughter to Wataro and Mine Matsushita, who had four children. In the bombing of Yokohama that was carried out between the evening of April 15, 1945, and the wee hours of the next day, Mine, then 61, and Sayo's 24-year-old sister, Yoshi, were killed. Sayo's father Wataro, who was in his 70s at the time, and her then 19-year-old brother, Takashi, sustained severe burns. Sayo, meanwhile, had married and moved away, and was spared any injuries.

It was only in 2010, years after Sayo died in 1997, that Takeda found a duplicate of his mother's written account of the bombing inside the family's Buddhist altar. According to members of Takeda's family, Sayo had written the original note several years before her death. It began, "My descendants are likely to wonder why there are two memorial tablets from April 15, 1945."

Through the note, Sayo was explaining to her descendants why Mine and Yoshi had died.

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/features/news/20150804p2a00m0na015000c.html

[stevenleser]

1. Extremely sad. K&R. nt

[JustAnotherGen]

2. k and r

[phantom power]

3. It worries me that there will be no living memory of what nuclear weapons really do

The memories are fading, but the bombs are still around. I worry that the coming generations will grow up insufficiently afraid.

[Person 2713]

4. I agree

[HooptieWagon]

5. Yokohama wasn't nuked.

The only cities that were nuclear attacked were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yokohama was firebombed a couple months earlier. The U.S. had been bombing major Japanese cities since capturing islands within range in the latter half of 1944. The bombing raids each involved several hundred B-29 bombers. The incendiary bombs used in some of the raids were particularly lethal on civilian populations.

[Lulu Belle]

8. Is it true that the

Only reason that LeMay stopped the bombardment is that they ran out of ordinance?
I remember reading something like that years ago.

[HooptieWagon]

9. The U.S. did run short of incendiary bombs.

We were dropping them on German cities too.

[EX500rider]

11. They were also starting to run out of targets...

............approximately 40 percent of the urban area of the 66 cities subjected to area attacks were destroyed.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Destruction_of_Japan.27s_main_cities

[Codeine]

6. Is it Poor Innocent Japan Week again?

Sigh.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. Yep. Can't wait to read about the Urban Renewal of Nanking...

[GusBob]

10. Is it ever Bataan Death March week?

what was the survival rate of that little gem of history I reckon?