The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will be releasing previously undisclosed videos of 47 people giving their accounts of a devastating air raid that the United States carried out on the Japanese capital during World War Two.
About 100,000 people died in the predawn attack on March 10, 1945. Most of the destruction caused by the US B-29 bombers was seen in the city's eastern residential areas.
Tokyo holds an exhibit on the air raid around March 10 every year to prevent the memories of the war from being forgotten. This year the city released videos of 122 people recounting the raid and other wartime experiences.
The city has obtained permission from 47 more people to release videos of their testimonies. The videos will be shown at next year's exhibit.
Tokyo originally intended to show all the videos at a facility it planned to build. The city wanted to construct the facility in order to pass on the memories of the air raid. But a conflict in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly over the contents of the facility's exhibition led to the plan being suspended in 1999. Testimonies were provided by 330 people. But most of them have not been released.
City officials note it has been difficult to reach some of the people to obtain their permission to release the videos. The officials are calling on those individuals and their family members to get in touch, if they want to make their testimonies public.