Tachiarai Army Airfield

Tachiarai Army Airfield (大刀洗陸軍飛行場) was completed in October 1919 by the Imperial Japanese Army, straddling what are now Tachiarai and Chikuzen towns and Asakura city, Fukuoka Prefecture. Encompassing 3.94 million square meters by 1937, it was regarded as the largest military airfield in East Asia. The site was chosen for its strategic value as a relay point for air groups heading to the Chinese mainland, its distance from the coast providing protection from naval gunfire. The unit that became the 4th Flying Regiment was based there from 1919 (it moved to Kikuchi, Kumamoto, in 1940), and the 77th Flying Regiment was organized there in July 1937 before leaving for Manchuria the same month. From 1929 to 1936, commercial aviation also used the facility. In 1940, the Tachiarai Army Flight School (大刀洗陸軍飛行学校) opened, eventually overseeing 18 branch campuses across Kyushu, Okayama, Kyoto, and the Korean Peninsula. During the Pacific War, the airfield served as a major training ground and kamikaze dispatch point. On March 27, 1945 and subsequent dates, USAAF B-29 Superfortresses launched devastating raids, killing approximately 1,000 people including civilians and completely destroying the airfield. Stationed aircraft were evacuated to Mushiroda Airfield. The Tachiarai Peace Memorial Museum (大刀洗平和記念館) began in 1987 as a private museum in the old Tachiarai railway station and reopened in October 2009 as a Chikuzen town museum, displaying approximately 1,800 war artifacts, a Nakajima Ki-27 recovered from Hakata Bay in 1996, and a Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero Model 32.