Target Tokyo

 

Narrated by Captain Ronald Reagan, United States Army Air Forces, this film features the first B-29 raid on Tokyo.

The raids on Tokyo would culminate in the raid of March 9-10, 1945, which burned out 15.8 square miles of the city and killed between 100,000-200,000 people.  The Commanding General of XXI Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay, was unimpressed by the two atomic bombs.  As he noted at the time, his bombers would have destroyed all cities in Japan by the time of the November 1945 invasion of Japan in any case.  The movie The Purple Heart (1944), a fictional look on the fate of the captured Doolittle Raiders, predicted the use of air power to bring about the ending of the war in the Pacific:

 

President Reagan’s speech to the Japanese National Diet on November 11, 1983:

 

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