So, I noticed there’s a lot of confusion about why the bombing would have occurred at such an apparently remote location. So we all know about the 2 nuclear ones and the Tokyo firebombing one. However, the US had other campaigns as well. There was one against Japan’s 6 main cities, intended to cripple productions and, ahem, tie up some of Japan’s resources by making them have to deal with hundreds of thousands of newly homeless citizens. There was also quite a few against Japanese held islands, given their strategic value.
But there was another plan in place as well. This one called for the attack of small cities and towns. The logic was sound; Japan can’t guard it’s entire transportation network, so by taking out undefended small cities and towns disperse across the country side, you can easily cripple their logistics network without much hassle. Plus, breaking the morale of an isolated community is a lot easier than breaking the moral of a large city. So they did. Unlike the other air raids, these ones never attracted much international attention given how each one had a much lower civilian casualty count, so not too many people in the west know about them. If I had to say, their home probably got caught up in one of the logistic crippling raids. Given that only 20% of bombs landed within a 300 m radius of the intended target, it’s not too hard to imagine how the house was hit. If their area was a target, it would also explain why the brother became a kamikaze pilot. Most joined out of a mix of peer pressure, duty, and most commonly, to protect their families from the Americans. So naturally, recruitment for kamikaze pilots was extremely high in areas hit by the US.
War crimes are called crimes for a reason.