You’ve probably heard of Tanabata—the Festival of the Stars, celebrated on the seventh of July in many parts of Japan.

It’s the one where they write wishes on pieces of paper and tie them to a bamboo bough. I’m still waiting on my packet of TimTams that never runs out, but the festival itself’s a lot of fun; a favourite with Australian teachers of Japanese.

The legend behind Tanabata is actually imported from China. The king of Heaven has a daughter whose task is to weave beautiful cloth (the star we know as Vega … if we know star names). She is very lonely and her father introduces her to a herder (the star, Altair). They begin spending so much time together that she neglects her weaving. Her father banishes them to opposite sides of the River of Heaven, which we know as The Milky Way. Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, if the skies are clear, the star-crossed lovers can meet up. That has to be lucky.

My Japanese home city, Kofu, is remembering a far more tragic event that occurred on this day seventy five years ago. The skies were cloudy, so the lovers couldn’t meet on 7th July 1945, but a squadron of American planes used radar to conduct a firebombing raid on Kofu. There were no air raid shelters because of the high groundwater level. 79 percent of the city’s urban area was destroyed with 740 civilians killed, over 11 thousand were seriously injured and over 18 thousand homes were destroyed. Lest we forget.