(Transcript from World News Radio)
70 years ago today, United States planes firebombed the Japanese capital Tokyo, in what's largely considered the single most deadly bombing raid in history.
The bombing in the dying months of the Second World War was more destructive than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Santilla Chingaipe has the deails.
It was the early hours of 10 March 1945 in the bustling shopping district of Asakusa.
It was hit by a massive payload of incendiary bombs dropped from U-S aircraft.
The attack began just after midnight and lasted for just over two-and-a-half-hours.
"The leading B-29s found their objective... Now, below us, Tokyo"
Part of Tokyo was reduced to charred rubble, tens-of-thousands were killed, and hundreds-of-thousands were left homeless.
Yoshitaka Kimura was seven-years-old when the air raid happened.
Seventy years on, he recalls seeking refuge in a department store that ended up being one of the few buildings in the area which stayed standing, as the city around him burned.
"(through translation) The fire bombs fell down like rain. It was similar to the firework festival along Sumida river today. Even as a child, I thought it was incredible - but that was it."
Mr Kimura had been running toward the Sumida river with his aunt and older sister, when as he describes it, gusts from a nearby explosion knocked him over and blew him into the back entrance of the department store.
He describes the escape as a stroke of luck.
" (through translation) So then I, and only I, was sucked into the building with the gust of the explosion. I was sucked in, because I was lying sideways, I had fallen over (from the gust caused by a bomb blast)."
Tens of thousands of people who fled to Sumida river were burned, crushed, drowned or suffocated in the firestorm.
That night, the US had switched tactics.
Earlier bombings were mostly high-altitude, daytime raids that targeted aircraft factories and other military facilities.
"Suddenly in March he switched to low level night-time maximum effort fire raids, and Japan's dreams of a world empire went up in a flaming inferno. "
But on 10 March, the B29 bombers flew much lower, dumping thousands of napalm-equipped cluster bombs onto targets that included residential areas, torching traditional wood and paper homes.
Photographs taken in the days after the bombing show the vast devastation.
But Mr Kimura is now one of the few who remain to tell the story as an eyewitness.
"(through translation) Perhaps it isn't something that can be done, but I think people need to communicate more strongly, more deeply (about the air raid). There there could be some chance that it (war) can be avoided. We're all human. That's what I think. Maybe I'm being too bashful."
