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Despite the vulnerability of Japanese cities to incendiary bombs, the firefighting services lacked training and equipment, and few air raid shelters were constructed for civilians. Fuel shortages, inadequate pilot training, and a lack of coordination between units also constrained the effectiveness of the fighter force. The number of fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft guns assigned to defensive duties in the home islands was inadequate, and most of these aircraft and guns had difficulty reaching the high altitudes at which B-29s often operated. Japan's military and civil defenses were unable to stop the Allied attacks. During early August 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were struck and mostly destroyed by atomic bombs. Aircraft flying from Allied aircraft carriers and the Ryukyu Islands also frequently struck targets in Japan during 1945 in preparation for the planned invasion of Japan scheduled for October 1945. From February 1945, the bombers switched to low-altitude night firebombing against urban areas as much of the manufacturing process was carried out in small workshops and private homes: this approach resulted in large-scale urban damage and high civilian casualties. Initial attempts to target industrial facilities using high-altitude daylight "precision" bombing were largely ineffective. The strategic bombing campaign was greatly expanded from November 1944 when bases in the Mariana Islands became available as a result of the Mariana Islands Campaign.

From June 1944 until January 1945, B-29s stationed in India staged through bases in China to make a series of nine raids on targets in western Japan, but this effort proved ineffective.

While plans for attacks on Japan had been prepared prior to the Pacific War, these could not begin until the long-range Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber was ready for combat. The United States Army Air Forces campaign against Japan began in earnest in mid-1944 and intensified during the war's last months. Allied naval and land-based tactical air units also attacked Japan during 1945. Strategic bombing raids began in June 1944 and continued until the end of the war in August 1945.

During the first years of the Pacific War these attacks were limited to the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 and small-scale raids on military positions in the Kuril Islands from mid-1943. During World War II, Allied forces conducted air raids on Japan from 1942 to 1945, causing extensive destruction to the country's cities and killing between 241,000 and 900,000 people.