fujisan-ni-noboru-hinode:The airbase at Chiran, Minamikyūshū, on the Satsuma Peninsula of Kagoshima
fujisan-ni-noboru-hinode:The airbase at Chiran, Minamikyūshū, on the Satsuma Peninsula of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, served as the departure point for hundreds of Special Attack, or kamikaze sorties, launched in the final months of World War II in a last ditch effort to inflict maximum damage on the American fleet before Japan’s inevitable defeat. The Imperial Japanese Army Air Service airbase, with it’s two runways, was the principal kamikaze base during the Battle of Okinawa. Of the 1,036 Japanese Army aviators who died in attacks launched during the Battle of Okinawa, 439 were from Chiran. Of the total 439, 335 were classed as “young boy pilots” (少年飛行兵), volunteers under the age of 19 years old. A peace museum, dedicated to the brave Japanese pilots, the Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots (知覧特攻平和会館) now marks the site.In 1975, the museum was built to commemorate the lives of the pilots and document their “patriotic efforts for peace”. Installed in 1986, exhibits include four planes: a Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, a 1943 Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien, a 1944 Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate, and a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, recovered from the seabed in 1980. On a personal level, the exhibits include letters, poems, essays, testaments, and other artefacts, as well as photographs of the 1,036 pilots, arranged in the order in which they died. There is also a grand piano, on which two of the pilots played the Moonlight Sonata, the night before their act of martyrdom. -- source link