This series is about the Japanese home front in and around Sasebo, Japan, during World War II. It is not a condemnation or critique of actions taken by either side during the war but rather a look at the civilian perspective of the war and the still surviving facilities that supported the war effort.

When it comes to World War II artifacts, it’s sometimes easier to find a rare Zero fighter variant than it is to find a firefighting mop.

There’s no other word to describe the strange artifact I saw at the Sasebo Peace Museum (Air Raid Reference Room) in the Tono-cho community center. It was a long wood mop handle with over-sized straw ropes hanging from its head and an illustration showing how it could be used to flail water onto a fire started by incendiary bombs filled with napalm. It sounds absurd, but it’s what civilian fire brigades had on hand. That was life on the Japanese home front during the last years of World War II when hundreds of bombers on low-level bombing runs could lay waste to entire cities in a night.

The first B-29 mission against the Japanese homeland in June 1944 resulted in a single bomb hitting its intended target and the operational loss of seven aircraft. An inauspicious start for the campaign and as it progressed the conventional-bombing techniques that had worked in Europe were found to be less effective against Japan. By the beginning of 1945 tactics had begun to include firebombing, in which an area would be targeted and set on fire with napalm-filled incendiary bombs to take out a target. They got their targets, but also destroyed cities in the process. Sasebo, Japan was the target of one such raid.

U.S. intelligence had Sasebo pegged as a town of 206,000, though according to local figures the number was around 280,000. Sasebo was home to one of Japan’s four naval arsenals, an aircraft factory and numerous other war-production or military facilities, part of a string that spread down the coast to Omura.

Reconnaissance photo taken a week before the air raid, potentially used in planning. Photo courtesy of Phil Eakins. (Also available at Japan National Diet Library online in this document, page 37. National Diet Library received the files from U.S. National Archives.)

XXI Bomber Command designated the Sasebo Naval Arsenal, military barracks, dockyards and military-related facilities as targets by for an air raid against the Sasebo urban area to be carried out on the night of June 28-29, 1945. A few days prior to the raid leaflets had been dropped on several cities warning of an impending air raid on one of them, as was standard practice, but evacuating a city and especially one involved with war work, wasn’t going to happen.

That Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday morning 145 B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers of the 73^rd Bombardment Wing made the long trip from their base in the Marianas 1500 miles away. Using an island near Sasebo, they began their dead-reckoning initial point for starting the attack. They considered Sasebo difficult to bomb due to its hilly terrain and surrounding built-up valleys.

According to the after action report, the incendiaries were dropped from around 10,000 feet and were a mix of napalm-filled E-48 cluster bombs, which were found to be superior to earlier models against “typical Japanese structures,” harder hitting M-17 incendiary bombs chosen for their ability to penetrate industrial warehouses and fire-setting abilities, and finally the M-76 for use on docks and warehouses. Over the course of an hour the B-29s dropped 1,077.1 tons of bombs on an area 2.5 miles long and half a mile wide.

Fire bomb fragment

For the 73^rd Bombardment Wing it was mission 235 on a Thursday. Mission 241 would be bombing Kumamoto on Sunday and after a night off Kochi was on the agenda for mission 248. For Sasebo City, it was the day their city center and nearly half the city burned down, 60,000 people were made homeless and at least 1,231 people died.

The reference room contains bomb models, display with descriptions of how the bombs functioned and pieces of the various incendiaries used on display near images and maps as a testament to their lethality and effectiveness. A particular image of Hachiman-gu’s stone torii gate and stone steps (where a bomb strike mark can still be seen) surrounded by nothing especially stood out to me as that shrine is near my home and I’ve visited it several times and enjoyed festivals there.

The fire-hitting mop, or hitataki, aside, they also have homemade bokuzukin (flash hoods), used by volunteer firefighters and everyday items from civilian life. Cookery, a crude rice-huller made of a bottle and stick, clothing, money and most interestingly, perfectly preserved school text books from both the pre-War and wartime periods.

Bokuzukin (flash hoods)

If you can read Japanese you can spend some time looking through them (yes, they will let you handle the books) to see what children were taught, including lessons from a 1930s textbook named “Democracy.” In a period where military officers assassinated a prime minister and other political leaders that opposed them as fascism took hold, this book probably lost its applicability early on.

There is also a lot of written information that required translating but goes further into things such as rationing, which began in 1937, a few months after Japan renewed its invasion of China, and continued to worsen until war’s end almost eight years later. This plays into the larger view of the Pacific War/World War II because it shows how Japan began a war with China which it lacked the resources to prosecute, then began a second broader war to secure said resources to finish the first war. Meanwhile rationing and limitations placed on the civilian populace increased and kept doing so as resources continued to run out.

Military-wise there is a collection of uniforms but two particular items related to the military are really worth taking a look at.

One is a box of Type 4 ceramic hand grenade casing, an ingenious solution to Japan’s material shortcomings. Type 4 grenades used ceramic casings made in Arita, a nearby town famous for pottery, and powder from the Sasebo naval arsenal, since the ships that powder was intended for were now at the bottom of the Pacific. Many were passed out for home island defense, though they were also found in the Philippines as well. (Today ornately painted replica grenades can be purchased as souvenirs at the Sasebo Navy Exchange.)

Senninbari

The other item is a protective talisman unique to Japan, the senninbari or thousand-stitch belt. The belt (or headband, there is flexibility in its use) is a bolt of white cloth that a woman would publically go around asking other women to sew in a crimson stitch or knot, and when finished would be given to a service member deploying overseas where it would be worn with the belief it could protect him from harm. This could be done by a loved one such as a soldier’s mother, wife or sister or by patriotic organizations that made them for service members. According to Shizue Fujisawa, who was a teenage welder at the naval arsenal, you could sew a stitch for each year of your age.

It would be difficult to succinctly sum up every interesting piece and odd artifact as the reference room collection is a bit erratic but very worth the time to peruse, especially if you know some Japanese or have someone who can read and interpret for you. Not a proper museum, it’s more of a repository of information and artifacts relating to the air raids and that era by volunteers dedicating to preserving the memory of this chapter in their city’s history. Fittingly, the room is inside the former Tono-cho elementary school as it’s volumes of tacked up newspapers and information mixed with models and artifacts make it feel a bit like something put together by students.

The room is built around an unpleasant topic, but the volunteer there was very friendly to me and we, through my girlfriend, talked a bit and he was very happy to have someone visit who appreciated what they’ve put together. I encourage other Americans to visit without worrying they would feel unwelcome because of their nationality.

The gentleman volunteer, a man who’s house was bombed during the air raid when he was two, kept the room open for an extra two hours for my visit then was kind enough to lead us to the nearest former air raid tunnel.

A repurposed air raid shelter

Sasebo is full of uniqueness when it comes to World War II sites and one of those quirks are its air raid shelter tunnels built into the side of the hill beneath the former elementary school. Built by Korean laborers, the tunnels were converted into businesses after the war and the owner of Honda Kamaboko Ten (Minced Fish Shop) let me come inside and see hers. The tunnel was long and narrow with a fairly low roof and it’s easy to imagine how terrifying such a claustrophobic space would be for hundreds of people to cram into as they waited in darkness through an hour of explosions and fire in the city and the drone of radial engines and anti-aircraft fire in the sky.

Hundreds took shelter in these tunnels and many smaller air raid shelters that dotted Tono-cho, but there wasn’t room for everyone. Outside one of the smaller shelters, a fifteen-year old girl in a yukata, or light summer kimono, and firefighting hood, waited out the blaze. Separated from her family while attacking napalm-induced fires with a hitataki and then unable to escape the area, she waited outside the shelter door and watched the nearby elementary school, where she learned as a child, burn to the ground.

A letter commemorating the bombings of Sasebo and Yawata, the first B-29 bombings against mainland Japan. This was the year before the big air raid. Photo by Phil Eakins.

Sasebo Peace Museum (Air Raid Reference Room)

〒857-0864 Nagasaki-ken, Sasebo-shi, Tonoochō, 5−1

No admission fee, open on Saturdays and Sundays 10 a.m.- 3 p.m.

Museum entrance

The Japanese Homefront Series

The Sasebo Air Raid (Sasebo Peace Museum/Air Raid Reference Room)
Shizue-san the Welder
Sasebo Air Defense Command Center
From Beginning to End (Hario Wireless Transmitting Station and Uragashira Repatriation Center Museum)
Kawatana, Home of Shinyo and the Fish-Shaped Water Bomb
Safe at School (Mukyudo)