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28th of January 1945

When we came up out of our basement yesterday afternoon everything looked the same as usual except that there were fewer people on the streets. But the raid was heavier than we thought. Considerable damage and many casualties (a thousand, they say, mostly office people) were caused in the very heart of the business district. It was lunch-time and there must have been long queues at the worker’s canteens. Today part of the Ginza has been roped off. Possibly because the electric power in that section of the city was cut off, the Times has not come out. But the Asahi, urging the people to take shelter, points out that six girl teachers were killed because they failed to get into one of the sidewalk ditches. At any rate a lot of the easy nonchalance most people in Tokyo had acquired, has now been shocked out of their systems.