The sirens had become almost routine by April 1945, but the residents of Tokyo's Ōji district knew this night would be different.

The Night Tokyo Burned: Operation Meetinghouse's Final Act

When B-29s returned to finish what March had started

A forgotten April 1945 firebombing raid methodically erased another section of Tokyo as strategic bombing became grimly routine.

The sirens had become almost routine by April 1945, but the residents of Tokyo's Ōji district knew this night would be different. At 10:47 PM on April 15th, the first pathfinder B-29s dropped their marker flares, painting the industrial quarter in phosphorescent green. Within minutes, 109 Superfortresses from the XXI Bomber Command began unleashing 1,931 tons of incendiary clusters on a city already scarred beyond recognition.

Major General Curtis LeMay had revolutionized strategic bombing just weeks earlier with the devastating March 10th firestorm that killed over 80,000 civilians. But the war machine demanded more. The April 15th raid targeted the Ōji industrial zone—home to paper mills, chemical plants, and the crucial Tokyo Arsenal facilities that still churned out artillery shells for a desperate empire.

Haruko Tanaka, a sixteen-year-old factory worker, would later describe the scene to occupation interviewers: 'The sky turned orange, then white. We ran toward the Sumida River, but the bridges were already burning. My mother pushed me into the water. I never saw her again.'

The American crews flew at dangerously low altitudes—between 7,000 and 9,500 feet—stripped of defens…

💡 The Ōji paper mills destroyed that night had printed the Japanese military's official surrender documents just four months later—forcing the government to source paper from rural prefectures.