Victims Remembered 78 Years after U.S. Air Raid on Tokyo

Tokyo, March 10 (Jiji Press)--Victims were remembered in a memorial service in Tokyo Friday 78 years after a U.S. air raid on the Japanese capital believed to have claimed the lives of over 100,000 in one night.

Around 100 people, including bereaved families and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike as well as Japanese Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, prayed for the victims and for world peace in the ceremony at a memorial hall in Sumida Ward.

In the early hours of March 10, 1945, around 300 U.S. bombers dropped a large amount of incendiary bombs mainly on Sumida, Koto and Taito wards, leaving over one million people affected.

The hall currently houses the remains of around 105,000 unidentified and unclaimed people who died in the air raid.

Takashi Maruyama, 88, who participated in Friday's event from the central Japan city of Nagano, said he lost his mother and four siblings in the air raid.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]