Counting Bodies: The Tokyo Air Raids and the Politics of Memory

In the fall of 1945, personnel attached to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) expressed their frustration with the Japanese government, which, unlike German authorities, had done a poor job in tabulating the number of people killed and injured by air raids on Japan’s cities. The consternation was particularly acute regarding the case of Tokyo, which at the time hosted numerous mass graves holding the bodies of tens of thousands killed by large-scale fire bombings of the capital.  Over the ensuing decades, the issue of counting the dead would become a central feature of the politics of how the air raids on Tokyo ought to be remembered and publicly memorialized. For this presentation, I outline the tension between the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and citizen “memory activists” over the issue of both counting and naming Tokyo fire-bombing victims, and how the controversy subsequently became inscribed upon the physical landscape in the form of a memorial which holds the names of over 70,000 people.