A scene from the Great Tokyo Air Raid, March 10, 1945. (Mainichi)
As great powers bring catastrophe upon the world, the anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug. 15 has again come and gone.
“Write my name on my leg, Mama.”
Mitsuko Sakamoto, 87, a Tokyo resident and former teacher, was shaken by a poem that begins with that line. It is the work of Palestinian American poet Zeina Azzam.
In the poem, a girl in the Gaza Strip asks her mother to write her name on her leg with a permanent marker. So that even if she is killed in an airstrike, she can be identified: “When the walls crush our skulls and bones / our legs will tell our story.”
When Sakamoto was 5, she lived through the March 1945 Great Tokyo Air Raid, fleeing in confusion with a tag bearing her name and blood type. On her left leg are burn scars “the size of a sweet potato and the size of a potato.” She cannot forget the sound of a baby crying after dawn, as she was on her way back to her burned-down home. A charred corpse, apparently the mother, was covering the baby as if to protect it. That memory overlaps with the children of Gaza.
Leaders who take human life lightly
Curtis LeMay, who commanded the U.S. air raid on Tokyo, also led airstrikes during the Vietnam War. He is said to have boasted that he would “bomb them back to the stone age.” U.S. President Donald Trump, who attacked Iran this year, used nearly the same words.
Displaced Palestinian beekeepers harvest honey from beehives at al-Dabba family bee farm, in Gaza city, Aug. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
The air raid 81 years ago indiscriminately burned Tokyo’s working-class neighborhoods and massacred about 100,000 people in a single night. In the war with Iran, the U.S. military continues pinpoint bombing from distant locations, yet civilian casualties never cease. Many children were killed in an erroneous strike on a school. Even if the form of war has changed, the reality that life is treated lightly has not.
The world should have learned a great deal from the 20th century’s wars, which produced unprecedented numbers of victims. International law making war illegal and frameworks for international justice to punish crimes against humanity were put in place.
Yet what stretches before our eyes is a scene that seems to have returned to an age of rule by force. At the forefront of destroying the international order are two great powers.
Trump, seeking to extract concessions from Iran, has carried out repeated attacks and become bogged down. Russia, governed by President Vladimir Putin, does not stop its invasion of Ukraine even after losing many lives and suffering fuel shortages after attacks on its oil facilities.
The United States also expanded the battlefield during the Vietnam War in an attempt to gain the upper hand in peace negotiations, prolonging the fighting. The Soviet Union paid a heavy price for its invasion of Afghanistan. It is impossible not to feel anger at the folly of leaders who learn nothing from history.
The world stands at a crossroads. Nations are competing to expand their military capabilities, and a chain of mistrust is heightening the risk of conflict.
Japan is exposed to pressure from China and Russia and is being pressed by Washington to strengthen its defense capabilities. As it is forced to respond to new ways of fighting using artificial intelligence and drones, the administration of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is positioning the defense industry as an engine of growth. It is strengthening intelligence-gathering and analysis functions, but these could easily be turned on the Japanese public.
Wartime systems are being built into society and the economy.
Think deeply, without being swept along
Firefighters put out a fire after Russian missiles hit a warehouse in Kyiv, Ukraine, Aug. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Gen Nogami, a professor at Waseda University who studies the relationship between war and society, says, “When it comes to Japan’s memory of war, the perspective of Japan as a victim in the final phase of the Pacific War tends to be emphasized. But what matters now may be the memory of the 1930s, when there should still have been many choices available.”
As the global depression drove the economy into a deep slump and public discontent intensified, party politics lost trust and the military rose in influence. The Manchurian Incident of 1931 led to a gradual expansion of the battlefront, and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and arms reduction treaties.
There were many chances to turn back. But as crackdowns in the name of maintaining public order deprived speech of its freedom and hardline, populist arguments swept public opinion, there was no way left to correct the mistakes of the country’s leaders. Japan plunged into war with the United States without anyone being able to make a change in course.
Turning to the present, we cannot ignore the reality of a world in which force is running rampant. The choices appear limited. But if we simply allow ourselves to be swept along by circumstances, mutual distrust with neighboring countries will only grow.
We need to think through, to the very end, whether there are other options. Security is a question that concerns the lives of every citizen. What is being tested is the practice of democracy: building consensus through careful debate without deepening division.
It is difficult to foresee the consequences that each decision at each moment will have for the future. But we can look to history and find where we stand now. That should be the means by which we resist folly.