How many died during during the bombing of Tokyo?

Answer 1

The "Tokyo Fire-Bombing", which the Western press would not touch, and the Japanese survivors would not like to dwell up was an event which happened months before the atom-bombs and with far more lethal consequences. The night of March 9, 1945, began typically enough for war-weary Tokyo residents.

-

The Americans dispatched the first wave of more than 300 bombers from Guam, Saipan and the Tinian Islands, 2,500 kilometers south of Tokyo. Each plane dropped 180 oil-gel sticks, less than a meter long, on the tightly knit neighborhoods of wooden houses. The resulting inferno unleashed hell on earth.

-

The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to me arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors' accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile (396 people per hectare) and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile (521 people per hectare), the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.