In 1945, near the end of World War II, cities in Japan were exposed to the dangers of air raids by U.S. troops. During July the previous year, the U.S. gained control of the Mariana Islands. This changed the military situation dramatically. The U.S. obtained a perfect base to raid Japanese soil. By the end of the same year, air raids on war plants began. The next year, cities became targets along with the war plants. The raid on Tokyo on March 10, 1945 claimed the lives of over 100,000 people. This air raid was the beginning of a series of indiscriminate bombings across Japan. Nagoya was hit two days later on the 12th, Osaka on the 13th, and Kobe on the 17th killing countless civilians. Raids continued until August 15, the day the war ended.
On June 29 that same year, Okayama-City adjacent to Kurashiki was under attack. This was the first air raid in the Chugoku/Shikoku Regions of Japan. Back then, Hiroshima-City was the most populated in the region and larger in size, leading the citizens of Okayama to believe that there would be no attack on their city before Hiroshima was attacked. Such prejudice delayed the air raid alarm, resulting in great damages with death tolls reaching over 2,000 and 25,000 houses destroyed. Following this attack, Takamatsu was raided on July 4. Then on August 6, the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. (Hiroshima, being the target of an atomic bomb, was excluded from air raids.)
The raids continued. On August 8, one day before the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Fukuyama-City, Hiroshima's neighbor, Kurashiki, suffered great damages from an air raid.
Kurashiki, during the war, had many war plants near its central district. Citizens of Kurashiki, no doubt, must have lived under fear envisioning an air raid as an imminent threat. However, the war ended and Kurashiki escaped an air raid.
There is a widely accepted opinion on the reason Kurashiki was not attacked. Numerous western works of art owned by the Ohara Museum of Art,El Greco's "Annunciation," Monet's "Waterlilies," and works by Gauguin, Matisse, Millet, Segantini, and so on,such treasures, so to speak, of western culture in Kurashiki eliminated the city from becoming a target of air raids by the Allied forces. This opinion is expressed by many well-informed people in their books and speeches. It is also supported by the fact that old cities of historical significance such as Kyoto, Nara, and Kanazawa also not destroyed by air raids. (Although Kyoto was not destroyed, it was hit by several raids and partially suffered damages.) It is presumed that the cultural value of these cities was taken into consideration when planning air raids.
Mr. Toshio Hikasa, representing the OKAYAMA Air Raids Archives, clearly denies such a belief. "The U.S. had no consideration over its enemy's cultural assets. As a matter of fact, Kyoto was even a possible target of a nuclear bombing. The reason that kept them from doing so was the fear expressed by Henry Lewis Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War, that it might stir up an anti-US movement that would lead the Japanese to team with the Russians after the war."
According to Mr. Hikasa, Nara and Kanazawa were also targets of U.S. air raids. Supporting this is a report titled "Secret: Attacks on Small Urban Industrial Areas" issued by the U.S. Army Air Force Headquarters A-3. This report is a study on the order of attacks according to the target city's population. The numbers of cities that show up on the report reaches 180, starting with Tokyo. Nara and Kanazawa are included. Okayama, which suffered great damages from an air raid, appears on the list as No. 31. and Kurashiki as No. 159.
By the way, Kurashiki had a population of 32,000 back then. Even a city of such moderate size was a target of air raids. The population of Tsuruga which suffered many casualties from a raid in July, 1945, had a population of 31,000.
Kurashiki was not only a target of an air raid, but there are papers confirming that an attack was at hand. The"Target Information Sheet" shown on the next page is evidence of that. It was discovered when Mr. Hikasa studied 51 rolls of microfilm the Osaka International Peace Center purchased from the USAF Historical Research Center at Maxwell Air Force Base. A "Target Information Sheet" was given to the U.S. Army Air Force aircraft personnel assigned to the mission. It not only contains the position and target points of each target city, but detailed and accurate information from its industry to its population.
The Target Information Sheet on Kurashiki is dated August 8, 1945, a week before the war ended. According to Mr. Hikasa, "normally, when a Target Information Sheet is handed to an aircraft, the raid took place about a week later on average. It was two days in the case of Sasebo and nine days for Okayama. Therefore, it is clear that an air raid on Kurashiki was about to take place at any moment."
Had the war continued another week, Kurashiki was definitely fated to be another victim of an air raid says Mr. Hikasa. In the said Target Information Sheet, no mention of the Ohara Museum of Art is found. We have no choice but to admit that the belief that "art saved the city" is only an illusion. If there is anything to learn from this discovery, it is the tragedy and cruelty of war. War leaves no room for romanticism.
