One Morning Like a Bird

HISTORICAL NOTE

On 9 and 10 March 1945, in an operation code-named Meeting House, more than three hundred B-29 Superfortresses from a base in the Mariana Islands made a low-level night attack over Tokyo. The raid began just after midnight and continued in waves for two and a half hours. Each plane was carrying up to eight tons of incendiary bombs. Film taken on the ground shows vast walls of fire moving uncontrollably in strong winds, while people, ant-like, scurry desperately for shelter. Estimates of casualties vary widely but it is likely that between eighty and a hundred thousand were killed that night, the majority from the old, densely populated wards near the river. By daybreak the Low City lay in ashes again.