Chiran Airfield (Army Kamikaze Special Attack Base)

Chiran Airfield (知覧飛行場) was established in December 1941 on the Satsuma Peninsula of Kagoshima Prefecture. Initially a pilot training base, it became the primary Army kamikaze (Special Attack Unit, 特別攻撃隊) departure base during the Okinawa campaign of 1945. The airfield was equipped with two runways and housed squadrons of Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa and Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate fighters converted for kamikaze use. From April to June 1945, during Operation Kikusui, 439 of the 1,036 Army aviators who died in Special Attack operations had their last departure from Chiran. The young pilots were famously photographed being waved off by local schoolgirls holding cherry blossom branches. Before departure, pilots wrote final letters and poems (遺書) now preserved in the museum. The airfield itself was demolished by the occupying US forces after the war and its runways no longer exist; relics such as the relocated main gate of the flying-school branch survive. In 1975 the Chiran Special Attack Relics Hall, forerunner of today's Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots (知覧特攻平和会館, built in the 1980s), opened on the former airfield site. The museum holds about 14,000 items on the Army special attack units, including a surviving Ki-84 Hayate, a Zero recovered from the sea, a full-scale Ki-43 replica, and the portraits and last letters of the 1,036 pilots.