In the shallower canals of Shitamachi, where people submerged themselves to escape the fire, the water boiled. The Sumida River stopped the conflagration from sweeping more than 15.8 square miles of the city. The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.” The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at
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