All historic sites
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55 sites · page 3 of 3
Miyazaki Naval Air Group Ruins (Miyazaki Kamikaze Base Memorial)
宮崎海軍航空隊跡（宮崎特攻基地鎮魂碑）
Site of the Imperial Japanese Navy air group at Akae Airfield (now Miyazaki Airport), which served as a major kamikaze staging base from February 1945. Forty-seven Ginga bombers with 140 crew members, together with Suisei dive bombers carrying 19 crew, took off from here on special attack missions. A memorial monument (Chinkon no Hi) was erected in 1983.
Mukyudo Cave (Eternal Cave Air-Raid Shelter)
無窮洞
Mukyudo ("Eternal Cave") is a massive air-raid shelter hand-dug by elementary school students and teachers of Miyamura National School in Sasebo over nearly two years (August 1943 – August 1945). Roughly 5 meters wide, 19 meters deep, and 8 meters high, the shelter accommodated approximately 600 students during air raids and contained a classroom, kitchen, toilets, food storage, and an Imperial portrait room. It is the only known school-style air-raid shelter in Japan built entirely by schoolchildren, and stands as a powerful testament to the civilian — especially children's — experience of strategic bombing on the home front.
Oga Kaiten Training Base Remains
大神回天訓練基地跡
Remains of a 1945 naval training base for kaiten manned suicide torpedoes on Beppu Bay. A public memorial park displays a full-size replica, while original support structures and storage tunnels survive at scattered locations.
Saga Air Raid Site
佐賀空襲跡
Site of the August 5, 1945 firebombing of Saga City by 65 B-29 Superfortress bombers of the USAAF 58th Bombardment Wing. Launching from Tinian in the Mariana Islands, the aircraft dropped 459 tons of incendiary and high-explosive ordnance on southern Saga and surrounding villages between 11:30 PM and 1:00 AM, destroying 443 structures and killing 61 civilians. A memorial stone inscribed "B29空爆焦土" (B-29 Bombing Scorched Earth) stands in the city to commemorate the victims.
Shinyo Special Attack Base Ruins (18th Shinyo Squadron, Nominoura)
震洋特攻基地跡（第18震洋隊・呑之浦）
Ruins of the 18th Shinyo Special Attack Squadron base at Nominoura inlet on Kakeromajima Island, part of the Amami archipelago in the Nansei Islands. Established in November 1944, the base housed 52 explosive motorboats and 186 personnel under the command of Toshio Shimao, who later became one of Japan's most celebrated postwar novelists. Twelve concrete storage tunnels carved into the hillside survive, one containing a full-scale Shinyo replica. The squadron received sortie orders on August 13, 1945, but the war ended before the attack could be launched.
Tsuiki Naval Air Base
築城海軍航空基地
Imperial Japanese Navy air base in northeast Kyushu, completed in 1942 as a carrier fighter pilot training facility. The Tsuiki Naval Air Group trained Zero fighter pilots and later staged kamikaze sorties — on March 18, 1945, six Ginga bombers departed on a special attack mission against the US task force southeast of Kyushu, with five aircraft and 15 crewmen lost. On August 9, 1945, ten fighters scrambled from Tsuiki in a failed attempt to intercept the B-29 carrying the Nagasaki atomic bomb. Reinforced concrete aircraft shelters (entaigo) survive in nearby Inadou, Yukuhashi City, with the Inadou No. 1 Revetment designated a Fukuoka Prefecture historic site in 2023. The base is now JASDF Tsuiki Air Base, home of the 8th Air Wing.
Kanmon Pedestrian Tunnel (Moji Side)
関門トンネル人道（門司側）
The Moji-side entrance to the Kanmon Pedestrian Tunnel, a 780-meter underwater walkway beneath the Kanmon Strait connecting Kyushu and Honshu. Construction of the roadway tunnel began in 1937 as strategic wartime infrastructure to ensure a protected Honshu-Kyushu link immune to aerial bombardment. The tunnel was bored through during WWII but not completed until 1958.