空襲体験・記憶 – Experience and Memory of Air Raids

Kenneth Hewitt. “The Social Space of Terror: Towards a Civil Interpretation of Total War.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 5 (1987): 445-74.

From abstract: In the paper I seek to interpret modern warfare from the perspective of civil society and its geography. I emphasize the predicament of civilians who are subject to direct and deliberate armed assaults. Particular attention is given to enforced uprooting or removals of population, and to annihilation of urban places with weapons of mass destruction. Two case histories are explored, both taken from the last months of the Second World War. They are, the expulsion of German civilians from Eastern Europe, and the firebombing of Japanese cities, especially Tokyo.

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Kenneth Hewitt. “Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73.2 (1983): 257-84.

Examines the World War II destruction of German and Japanese cities as a process of “place annihilation”.

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Sumida Local Culture Resource Center (墨田郷土文化資料館), “That Unforgettable Day–The Great Tokyo Air Raid through Drawings,” あの日を忘れない・描かれた東京大空襲, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 3 No 2, January 17, 2011.

Paintings depicting the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10, 1945 that were featured in a special exhibit hosted by the Sumida Local Culture Resource Center (墨田郷土文化資料館) in 2004.

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SAOTOME Katsumoto, “Reconciliation and Peace through Remembering History: Preserving the Memory of the Great Tokyo Air Raid,” 「歴史の記憶」から和解と平和へ東京大空襲を語りついで, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 3 No 4, January 17, 2011.

In this 2009 speech given by a central figure in the decades-long citizen’s movement to remember and memorialize the Tokyo air raids, Saotome Katsumoto discusses details of his own experience of the March 10, 1945 firebombing of Japan’s capital. He then situates the air raids on Tokyo within the context of twentieth century terror bombing campaigns and Japan’s “Fifteen Year War” in Asia.

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YAMABE Masahiko, “Thinking Now about the Great Tokyo Air Raid,” 今、東京大空襲を考える, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 3 No 5, January 17, 2011.

The author situates the Tokyo air raids and the postwar movement to remember them within the context of international law and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations in urban areas.

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Bret Fisk, “The Tokyo Air Raids in the Words of Those Who Survived,” 被災者が語る東京空襲, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 3 No 3, January 17, 2011.

Bret Fisk provides a brief description of the types of first-person accounts that exist in Japanese regarding the civilian experience of the Tokyo air raids. Examples of such accounts are given under the headings: “Complete Personal Narratives,” “Incomplete Episodes and Incidents,” and “Sites of Mass Suffering.”

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Cary Karacas, “Fire Bombings and Forgotten Civilians: The Lawsuit Seeking Compensation for Victims of the Tokyo Air Raids,” 焼夷弾空襲と忘れられた被災市民―東京大空襲犠牲者による損害賠償請求訴訟, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 3 No 6, January 17, 2011.

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Cary Karacas, “Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids,” Geographical Review, 100:4 (2010) pp. 521-537. An analysis of the movement to build a peace museum centered on the Tokyo air raids.

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