Blossoms hide awful truth

Everything was gone after the Allied firebombing in 1945. Pictures / AP

Tokyo parks cover mass graves from world’s most deadly bombing 70 years ago

It is spring in Tokyo, but Toshiko Takagi cannot bear to see office workers sitting beneath cherry blossom in the parks that dot the Sumida district where she lives.

Because each of the well-tended parks was once a mass grave for the victims of the single most deadly bombing raid in history, when, 70 years ago today, 334 Allied bombers incinerated nearly 42sq km of the Japanese capital, killing more than 100,000 people.

One of the parks holds the remains of her mother and two younger sisters, but the 82-year-old author does not know which one.

"It makes me want to scream when I think that there are thousands of bodies buried beneath where they are having their cherry blossom parties," she said, as she prepared to mark the anniversary of their deaths.

As the tide of war turned decisively against Japan, Takagi and her two younger sisters - Nobuko, 9, and Mitsuko, 7 - were evacuated to the seaside town of Ninomiya.

In late February 1945, the girls returned home for a short visit, but when it was time to go, her homesick sisters pleaded to stay longer.

Ms Takagi returned to Ninomiya to sit her school entrance exams.

Haruyo Nihei, just 8 when the bombs fell, was among many survivors who kept silent. A half-century passed before she shared her experiences with her own son.

"Our parents would just say, 'That's a different era'." Nihei said. "They wouldn't talk about it. And I figured my own family wouldn't understand."

Operation Meetinghouse took place on the nights of March 10 and 11. United States warplanes dropped 1500 tonnes of bombs, the majority 230kg (500lb) cluster bombs, each of which split into 38 napalm bomblets at 600m. Fanned by a strong breeze, the fire tore through the city's simple wooden and paper homes.

The raid killed more people than the comparable attack on the German city of Dresden, as well as the immediate casualties of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later. Survivors' accounts tell of women running through the streets with burning babies strapped to their backs, of people leaping into swimming pools to try to escape the flames only to be boiled alive.

"Canals boiled, metal melted and buildings and human beings burst spontaneously into flames," wrote John Dower in War Without Mercy.

It was the morning of March 11 when Takagi first learned of the tragedy over the radio. As she prayed for the survival of her family, her father arrived at the home of her host family to break the news: he had been unable to find her mother or sisters.

"I was angry and scared at the same time," she said. "I said we should go and find them straight away, that we had to leave immediately."

Her father refused, saying it was too terrible for her to see. Eventually, she travelled back to Tokyo and was horrified at what greeted her. "Everything was completely gone", she said. "We could see all the way across the city to Ueno; there was nothing."

Neighbours told them that the nearby Sumida River had run red for five days with blood. Because victims were charred beyond recognition, the army simply put the bodies in trucks and buried them in mass graves.

But the war was not over and Takagi's father was ordered to move to Niigata, on the northern coast of Japan. As she stood beside him at the station waiting for the train, it was strafed by US fighters, killing her father immediately.

Japan surrendered 10 days later. Mercifully, her two older brothers survived and they were reunited later in 1945.

"It was madness that Japan kept fighting after Italy and then Germany surrendered," she said. "I want the world to know what happened here in Tokyo.

"And I want people to know that when a nation has poor leaders, lots of people will die. And that's as true today as it was 70 years ago."

aruyo Nihei speaks next to a painting depicting a pile of victims. Photo / AP

Japan must face war past, warns Merkel

Japan must face up to its actions during World War II if it is serious about building better relations with its neighbours, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has warned.

The comments by Merkel, who is on a two-day official visit to Japan, are unlikely to be welcomed by Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, whose conservative views on Tokyo's war crimes are under scrutiny.

"Germany was lucky to be accepted in the community of nations after the horrible experience that the world had to meet with Germany during the period of National Socialism [Nazism] and the Holocaust," Merkel said in a lecture hosted by the left-leaning Asahi newspaper.

"This was possible first because Germany did face its past squarely, but also because the Allied Powers who controlled Germany after the Second World War would attach great importance to Germany coming to grips with its past."

Merkel went on to comment about Japan's uncomfortable relations with China and South Korea, saying: "The important thing is to attempt to seek out a peaceful resolution."

Abe recently set up a panel to choose the wording of an address that he will give in August, on the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II.

It is widely believed that Abe, a nationalist who has moved to reinterpret the part of Japan's constitution that commits the nation to peace, intends to water down apologies issued by previous leaders to nations that felt the full force of Imperial Japan's military.

Japan's relations with China have improved in recent months, after two years in which Tokyo and Beijing traded claims over the sovereignty of the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.