If God ever decided to create a city that would be most vulnerable to a mass napalm attack, He would construct 1945 Tokyo. Estimates vary, but at that stage of the war the city’s population was roughly 6.5 million inhabitants, as opposed to around 3.5 million Berliners. Although the two Axis capitals had roughly the same overall average population density of between 8,000 to 10,000 per square mile, certain areas in Tokyo like the Asakusa workers district crammed 130,000 people into the same space. And, unlike Berlin, many of Tokyo’s houses, shops, and other structures were built of wood and featured paper walls. To make matters worse, even though Japan’s leaders understood the ominous threat posed by the now-in-range B-29s to the home islands due to the loss of the Marianas, they prioritized production over protecting their citizenry.
As such, there were only 18 concrete air raid shelters in all of Tokyo, capable of only shielding approximately 5,000 of the city’s 6.5 million inhabitants. The rest made do with shallow backyard dugouts and other makeshift shelters. In the entire city a mere 8,000 firefighters along with citizens practiced in forming bucket brigades were all that stood between them and $200 million-worth of a mighty industrial power’s most advanced war machines coming in low to dump over three million pounds of flaming gel onto their city. And as if Tokyo wasn’t exposed enough, the night of March 9-10, 1945, was cold with howling winds gusting at up to 50 mph, creating an ideal environment for fanning the flames.
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