 Tokyo remembers US air raid victims Hundreds of people assembled at Tokyo's Ueno Park on March 10 at two ceremonies to unveil two monuments: a cenotaph dedicated to the victims of the U.S. firebombings of Tokyo on March 10, 1945 and a Statue of Mother and Children. The monuments were built at the initiative of Ebina Kayoko, a writer who lost all her six family members in the air raid, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the U.S. air raid that killed an estimated 100,000 people in densely populated areas in Tokyo. Ms Ebina said, "I have been afraid that the memory of the air raid would be forgotten if there was nothing to record it. My dream has come true at last." Speaking in front of the Statue of Mother and Children, Ichida Tadayoshi, Japanese Communist Party Secretariat head, said: "I believe that this statue represents the wishes for peace, not only of Ms Ebina but of 3.1 million Japanese war dead. It is our responsibility in the present-day world to unite regardless of thought and creed and make every effort to prevent the recurrence of such a tragedy." Before dawn on March 10, 1945, more than 300 U.S. B-29 bombers dropped incendiary bombs on eastern Tokyo. After this raid, the United States firebombed many other cities and towns throughout Japan. It dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and another on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. (end) |