One of the biggest things that people often remember about the World War 2 air campaigns is how many people died and which cities were hit.

And one of the biggest thing that people often overlook about the WW2 air campaigns is how many people survived and now had to try to keep living in what was now basically a Mad Max movie set.

The very famous Operation Meetinghouse, which famously sparked a great firestorm in Tokyo that killed over 80,000 people and wounded 40,000, is widely agreed to be one of the most, if not the most destructive single air raid to this day.

In a matter of hours, whole swathes of the city were burned and while the casualties were tragic and many know the numbers of dead/wounded from that day (often because it's compared to the casualty counts from the nuclear bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima), I've come across very few people who know how many were left homeless and penniless due to the bombings.

Some one million people lost their homes, businesses, and livelihoods in a single night.

Can you imagine the chaos if a section of Brooklyn, New York were to be burned and overnight, a million New Yorkers were suddenly homeless and lacking access to even the most basic necessities of food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.

Local infrastructure to deal with so many displaced would have been overwhelmed within a matter of hours following the attack. Hospitals, security forces, shelters, food distribution, transportation, everything would be in lock down.

This scene would be repeated across the whole of Japan in every major and minor city that could be reached by bombers.

The ability to cope with this scale of destruction and subsequent humanitarian crisis would quickly become impossible as it would be compounded by the fact that the people who are able to provide assistance are the very same people being targeted.

Key infrastructure that would have allowed neighboring or regional resources to be directed towards epicenters of destruction were similarly targeted. Roads, bridges, railways, stations, exchanges, etc.

Food and other key resources that would need to be distributed were already in short supply because of the tightening of blockades and the loss of resource producing territories as the war continued on.

By the end of WW2, Japan would bear witness to many of its citizenry on the brink of starvation and death from simple lack of even the most basic of shelter and medical supplies. If the war dragged on for even a month longer, we would have witnessed one of the largest famines in history.