Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots

The Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots stands on the site of the former Chiran Army Airfield in Chiran, Minamikyushu City, Kagoshima Prefecture. Its predecessor, a hall for special-attack relics, was established in 1975; the present museum building was constructed in the mid-1980s and opened in 1987. It commemorates the Imperial Japanese Army aviators who died in special-attack (kamikaze) missions during the Battle of Okinawa.

Chiran Airfield was completed in December 1941 as the Chiran branch of the Tachiarai Army Flight School, and its first 78 trainees arrived in January 1942. From late March 1945, as the Okinawa campaign began, the training field became the Army's principal special-attack staging base, with organized sorties beginning on April 1. A total of 1,036 Army special-attack airmen died in the Okinawa campaign. Of these, 439 — roughly 40 percent — took off from Chiran itself; the others flew from bases such as Bansei and Miyakonojo in Kyushu and from Taiwan. The museum commemorates all 1,036.

The museum displays about 4,500 items: farewell letters, diaries, poems, uniforms and personal effects, together with portraits of every pilot arranged in the order of their deaths. Four aircraft have been associated with the display. The Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate is an original airframe captured by US forces and later returned to Japan. The Mitsubishi A6M5c Zero was raised in 1980 from about 35 metres of water off the Koshiki Islands and is heavily damaged. The Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa is a full-size replica built for a film. A Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien exhibited here from 1986 to 2015 has since moved to the aerospace museum at Kakamigahara in Gifu.

Outside, stone lanterns line the approach, originally intended as one for each pilot who died. Nearby stand the Special Attack Peace Kannon Hall, built in September 1955, and a reconstruction of the half-buried "triangular barracks" in which pilots spent their last nights. Chiran is therefore a memorial district combining the former airfield, religious memorials and the collection of relics, and remains Japan's best-known special-attack memorial site.