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Late Modern Ages

During the Meiji Restoration Japan's provinces were restructured into prefectures and the government changed from family to bureaucratic rule. Nagoya was proclaimed a city on October 1, 1889, and designated a city on 1 September 1956, by government ordinance. Nagoya became an industrial hub for the region. Its economic sphere included the famous pottery towns of Tokoname, Tajimi and Seto, as well as Okazaki, one of the only places where gunpowder was produced under the shogunate. Other industries included cotton and complex mechanical dolls called karakuri ningyō.

Mitsubishi Aircraft Company was established in 1920 in Nagoya and became one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in Japan. The availability of space and the central location of the region and the well-established connectivity were some of the major factors that lead to the establishment of the aviation industry there.

Nagoya was the target of air raids during the Pacific War. The population of Nagoya at this time was estimated to be 1.5 million, fourth among Japanese cities and one of the three largest centers of the Japanese aircraft industry. It was estimated that 25% of its workers were engaged in aircraft production. Important Japanese aircraft targets (numbers 193, 194, 198, 2010, and 1729) were within the city itself, while others (notably 240 and 1833) were to the north of Kagamigahara. It was estimated that they produced between 40% and 50% of Japanese combat aircraft and engines, such as the vital Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter. The Nagoya area also produced machine tools, bearings, railway equipment, metal alloys, tanks, motor vehicles and processed foods during the war.

Air raids began on April 18, 1942, with an attack on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries aircraft works, the Matsuhigecho oil warehouse, the Nagoya Castle military barracks and the Nagoya war industries plant. The bombing continued through the spring of 1945, and included large-scale firebombing. Nagoya was the target of two of Bomber Command 's attacks. These incendiary attacks, one by day and one by night, devastated 15.3 square kilometres (5.9 sq mi). The XXI Bomber Command established a new U.S. Army Air Force record with the greatest tonnage ever released on a single target in one mission—3,162 tons of incendiaries. It also destroyed or damaged twenty-eight of the numbered targets and raised the area burned to almost one-fourth of the entire city. Nagoya Castle, which was being used as a military command post, was hit and mostly destroyed on May 14, 1945, followed by the Yokkaichi bombing in June 1945. Reconstruction of the main building was completed in 1959. Later in the same year on July 26, 1945, the Enola Gay also dropped a conventional pumpkin bomb in the Yagoto area of Nagoya as part of a bombing raid in order to train for their mission to Hiroshima. In 1959, the city was flooded and severely damaged by the Ise-wan Typhoon.