Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, Military museum in Koto ward, Tokyo, Japan.
The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage is a museum dedicated to documenting the impact of World War II air raids on Tokyo through photographs, documents, and personal belongings. The collection includes material that illustrates how civilians were affected by the bombing.
The center opened on 9 March 2002, founded by the Political Economy Research Institute and the Association to Record the Tokyo Air Raid, which Katsumoto Saotome helped establish in 1970. A planned metropolitan memorial museum was abandoned in 1999, so nearly 4,000 private donors funded this facility. Saotome, its first director, died in 2022.
The center presents how the raids transformed everyday life in Tokyo through personal accounts and everyday objects from residents. Visitors gain a direct sense of how ordinary people experienced and survived the bombing.
The facility is located in Koto ward and is accessible by public transportation. Plan for roughly two hours to see the exhibits, and English information is available throughout the space.
The museum holds an extensive collection of photographs from the bombing period that capture the destruction of buildings, streets, and infrastructure across the city. These images provide a direct visual record of the scale of devastation.
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