Shared Suffering: Remembering the Tokyo Firebombing in Adrian Francis' 'Paper City'

Leaving more than 100,000 dead and many more wounded and homeless, the bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 remains under-discussed both in Japan and abroad, with a small band of elderly survivors fighting to preserve its memory. Adrian Francis' documentary about their efforts may attract criticism for its relative lack of historical or political contextualisation, but by emphasising the activists' work, the film ultimately respects their desire to universalise what they endured, as Kenta McGrath discusses.

Additional keywords:
shitamachi, Great Tokyo Air Raid, World War II, Second World War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Peace Memorial Museum, memory activism, Errol Morris, Michael Moore, The Fog of War, Robert S McNamara, Curtis LeMay, war crime, United States, San Francisco Peace Treaty, Chongqing, Second Sino-Japanese War, Nagoya, Syrian Civil War, Aleppo, victims of war