Ishizue Jizo Memorial (Ichirenji Temple)

The Ishizue Jizo (いしずえ地蔵尊, Foundation Stone Jizo) stands within the grounds of Ichirenji Temple (一蓮寺), a historic Jishu-sect Buddhist temple in the Ota-cho district of Kofu City. The temple, whose formal name with its mountain name is 稲久山一蓮寺, traces its origins to the Kamakura period and holds important ties to the Kai-Genji warrior clan.

In the chaotic aftermath of the Kofu Air Raid (甲府空襲) on the night of July 6-7, 1945, Ichirenji Temple became an emergency cremation and burial site. Over 300 bodies of air raid victims were brought to the temple grounds, where they were cremated and their remains interred. The remains were moved to the municipal cemetery soon after the war, and around 1952–53 local volunteers erected a Jizo statue on the spot to memorialize these victims; it was given the name Ishizue Jizo when its hall was rebuilt in October 1999.

The air raid that necessitated this mass cremation was one of the most destructive incendiary attacks on a medium-sized Japanese city. On that night — the eve of the Tanabata (Star Festival) holiday — 131 B-29 bombers from the USAAF's bases in the Mariana Islands struck Kofu between 23:47 and 01:48. The raiders dropped mainly M47 napalm bombs, with a small number of M50 incendiaries, destroying 74% of the city's built-up area. The toll was devastating: a 1974 survey counted 1,127 killed, 1,239 injured, and 18,094 houses lost (the count made on July 7, 1945 had recorded 740 dead).

Many Kofu residents had believed their city would be spared, reasoning that the surrounding mountains of the Kofu Basin provided natural protection and that the city lacked major military-industrial targets. This false sense of security meant that civil defense preparations were inadequate, contributing to the high casualty rate.

The Ishizue Jizo memorial was renovated in 1999 and is registered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (総務省) as an official civilian war-dead memorial facility under its nationwide survey of war-damage memorial sites. The temple grounds also contain other war-related monuments, including a cenotaph honoring those who died in the Sino-Japanese War and Pacific War, erected in 1961.

Ichirenji's own main hall was burned down in the raid and rebuilt after the war. The temple preserves an Important Cultural Property — three Kamakura-period hanging scrolls of the Shaka Triad and Eighteen Arhats (designated 2010) — and Yamanashi prefectural cultural properties including its death registers (過去帳) dating back centuries. The juxtaposition of the ancient temple's cultural treasures with the wartime memorial creates a powerful testament to both the depth of Kofu's history and the devastation of the 1945 air raid.