Monument of the Nine Maidens

The Monument of the Nine Maidens (九人の乙女の碑, Kunin no Otome no Hi) stands in Wakkanai Park on the hilltop overlooking the city of Wakkanai, Hokkaido — the northernmost city in Japan and the closest point to the former Japanese territory of Karafuto (southern Sakhalin).

The monument commemorates one of the most poignant civilian tragedies of the final days of World War II. On August 20, 1945 — five days after Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration — Soviet naval infantry launched an amphibious assault on the port town of Maoka (now Kholmsk, Russia) in southern Karafuto. Despite the ceasefire, Soviet forces attacked with warships and ground troops, causing widespread destruction and civilian casualties.

At the Maoka Post and Telegraph Office, twelve young women were on duty operating the telephone switchboards that maintained vital communications between Karafuto and mainland Japan via Wakkanai. As Soviet troops landed and fighting engulfed the town, the operators remained at their posts, relaying urgent messages about the invasion to Wakkanai and the Japanese mainland. When Soviet soldiers approached the building, nine of the twelve operators — several of them still in their teens, the eldest 24 — died after taking poison (potassium cyanide and, by some accounts, morphine) rather than face capture. Their final words, as inscribed on the monument (other testimony records a different wording), were: "皆さん、これが最後です。さようなら、さようなら" ("Everyone, this is the end. Goodbye, goodbye").

The nine who perished were: Takaishi Miki (高石ミキ), Kagaya Shige (可香谷シゲ), Ito Chie (伊藤千枝), Yoshida Yaeko (吉田八重子), Shiga Haruyo (志賀晴代), Takagi Toshiko (高城淑子), Sawada Kimi (沢田キミ), Watanabe Teru (渡辺照), and Matsuhashi Midori (松橋みどり). Three colleagues survived after male coworkers intervened.

The incident has been called the "Himeyuri of the North" (北のひめゆり), drawing a parallel to the Himeyuri student nurses of Okinawa. Like the Okinawan tragedy, it illustrates how civilians — particularly young women — were caught in the chaos of the war's final days.

The monument was unveiled on August 20, 1963, the 18th anniversary of the tragedy, in a ceremony at Wakkanai Park. The memorial stands 1.8 meters tall and 2.4 meters wide, constructed of Noboribetsu stone in a folding-screen (byobu) design. On the right panel, a bronze relief of a telephone operator sculpted by the renowned Sapporo-born artist Hongo Shin (本郷新) depicts the operators at their switchboards. The center panel bears the maidens' final words inscribed in the handwriting of then-Hokkaido Governor Machimura Kingo (町村金五). The left panel lists the names of the nine women and an explanatory inscription.

Adjacent to the monument stands a stone bearing waka poems composed by Emperor Hirohito and Empress Kojun, who were deeply moved after visiting the site in 1968. The nearby Hyosetsu no Mon (Gate of Ice and Snow, 氷雪の門), also sculpted by Hongo Shin and unveiled the same day, serves as a broader memorial to all Karafuto islanders who perished during the Soviet invasion and its aftermath.

Every August 20, a peace memorial ceremony (平和祈念祭) is held in Wakkanai, attended by bereaved families and citizens. The monument remains a powerful reminder of the human cost of the Soviet invasion of Karafuto and the sacrifices of ordinary civilians in wartime.