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Fukuoka Special Attack Corps Monument
Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture

The Special Attack Corps Monument at Fukuoka Prefecture Gokoku Jinja honors the young men who died in battle while carrying out special (suicide) attacks during the Greater East Asia War. The monument has a bronze figure of a kamikaze pilot standing on a stone pedestal. A gokoku jinja is a Shintō shrine dedicated to persons from a prefecture or other area who died to protect Japan. Each gokoku jinja has several monuments to honor persons who died in wars.

Replicas of the standing kamikaze pilot have been erected also at other shrines such as Tochigi Gokoku Jinja and Kagoshima Gokoku Jinja. The Fukuoka Special Attack Corps Monument is the 12th monument erected in different prefectures throughout Japan. The monuments have the same bronze figure of the front half of a kamikaze pilot standing on a stone pedestal, but the monument arrangements and the explanatory plaques or inscriptions differ between locations.

The plaque on the left side of the Fukuoka Special Attack Corps Monument has the following words:

We certainly will never forget you

From 1941 to 1945, Japan fought the Greater East Asia War against the United States, Britain, China, and Netherlands in order to protect Japan's independence and continued existence and to free several Asian countries colonized by the great Western powers. Although we achieved brilliant military results, the odds of winning were against us as the war situation became adverse. It reached the point where we allowed an enemy landing at Okinawa Prefecture. We had to turn back the enemy's overwhelming military power, and finally there was no choice but to carry out battle operations with heartbreaking and courageous taiatari (body-crashing) attacks with aircraft and watercraft against enemy ships.

Through support from the Tokkōtai Commemoration Peace Memorial Association and in order to impart the story eternally to future generations, we erect this noble, courageous figure of a hero of about 20 years of age who did his utmost and gave his life in battle.

We desire that the people of modern times, who tend to be inclined toward peaceful individualism based on postwar education and strategy, look at and touch this figure on the pedestal that is dedicated to the spirits of the 301 men in the Special Attack Corps from Fukuoka Prefecture and consider that they gave their lives in place of their countrymen in order to protect them so that we could survive.

December 8, 2012 (Commemoration Day of Outbreak of Greater East Asia War)
Fukuoka Prefecture Committee for Erection of Statue of Special Attack Corps Hero


Close-up of kamikaze pilot on
Fukuoka Special Attack Corps Monument

The large characters on the plaque on front of the pedestal say "Ā tokkō" (Ah, Special Attacks). The plaque on front also has in small characters the following statement: "We certainly will never forget you."


Fukuoka Prefecture Gokoku Jinja

The following last letters and diary entries were written by Special Attack Corps members from Fukuoka Prefecture who died in special attacks: