Problems of Blitz Reconstruction in Japan: The Case of Sendai

American air raids during the Second World War devastated a number of cities in Japan. About a year after the end of the hostilities, the Japanese government designated 115 of these cities as blitzed cities. According to the official records of blitz reconstruction compiled by the Ministry of Construction, in total an area of 115,000 acres (62,776 ha) and 2,316,000 buildings were damaged, 330,000 persons were killed and 426,000 injured in these cities.1 By the time this designation was made substantial progress had already been made on the planning of these blitzed cities, based on the basic principles for reconstruction formulated and made public in December 1945 by the government’s War-damage Rehabilitation Board (WRB), the agency responsible for wardamage reconstruction.