Visuals from the Pacific War

These photographs from the Kumamoto Daily Newspaper 熊本日新聞 display the utter destruction downtown Kumamoto underwent from US air raids in the summer of 1945. The headline in the first photo reads that sixty B 29 bombers attacked the city, leaving at least 482 civilians dead.


The picture below (taken from a book published by Honganji - Looking at War Photos from Our Sect [Honganji]: Prayers for Peace写真に見る戦争と私たちの教団～平和を願って) shows two bomber planes donated to the Japanese military by the Buddhist sect, Nishi Hongangi 西本願寺 (Western Japanese Pure Land Buddhism), in 1943. The Kumamoto branch alone donated two of these bombers to the military with donations raised by their temples, a feat for a southern prefecture straddled in poverty at the time.