Kikaijima Naval Air Base Monument
Kikai Town, Kagoshima Prefecture
The Navy constructed an airfield in 1931 on Kikaijima, a small island about
halfway between Kyūshū and Okinawa. The naval air base, in the same place as the
current Kikai Airport, was on the southwest end of the island.
Although Kikaijima was a naval air base, the Army also used the base during
the Battle of Okinawa due to its strategic location. There were 19 Navy Kamikaze
Special Attack Corps members who died after taking off from Kikaijima [1],
and the Army also had 23 special (suicide) attack pilots who made sorties from
the air base on Kikaijima [2].
In 1994 a monument was erected to remember the Kikaijima Naval Air Base and
the men associated with the base who were killed in battle. A plaque to the
right of the monument provides the following history:
Kikaijima Naval Base was expanded and improved in 1944 as a crucial
frontline base for the country's defense. In July, the Navy's Iwao Unit was
permanently stationed at the base.
In the following year of 1945 after the landing of the American forces on
Okinawa, Kikaijima Air Base made huge contributions as a strategic base of
the highest importance for carrying out the war. While receiving heavy
bombing attacks day and night by American military aircraft, the base
serviced and sent off tokkō (special attack) aircraft.
However, during that time there was also a great number of persons who
lost their lives during the war. These include first the brave young heroes
who took off cheerfully toward Okinawa and undertook missions where they
went far away and never returned. They also include Iwao Unit members
who were killed while preparing special attack aircraft to make sorties or
while manning gun batteries to provide air defense.
Here at the 50th anniversary of the base's opening we erect this monument
to honor the memory of those war dead and to pray for everlasting peace.
1994
Former Naval Air Base War Dead Monument Planning Committee
The monument stands near the fence for the runway of Kikai Airport with the
sea a short distance away
Kikaijima Naval Air Base Monument
with Kikai Airport runway in background
beyond road just behind the monument
The sign below tells the story of tokkō (special attack)
flowers that bloom around the airport. It used to stand by the current Kikai
Airport runway
near the Kikaijima Naval Air Base Monument, but a typhoon destroyed
it.
Former sign near Kikai Airport about tokko flowers
The above sign can be translated as follows:
On Kikaijima, "tokkō flowers" (Japanese name of tennningiku)
hand down the story of the war's misery from generation to generation.
Every year they continue to bloom with flowers that have a
message of peace. During World War II (Pacific War), there was a naval air
base on Kikaijima. It was a tokkō (special attack) transfer base to the
Okinawan frontline. The farewell flowers given to young airmen who took off
to the battlefront were "tokkō flowers." Let's take good care of them.
Kikai Town
Photographer Chiho Nakata wrote the following two books about the tokko
flowers that bloom around Kikai Airport:
Even after Nakata's research for the two books, she does not come to
any firm conclusions on the origins of these flowers near Kikai Airport.
Related Web Page
Notes
1. This number is from an exhibit at Kanoya
Naval Air Base Museum.
2. Chiran Tokkō
2005, 69
Source Cited
Chiran Tokkō Irei Kenshō Kai (Chiran Special Attack
Memorial Society), ed. 2005. Konpaku no kiroku: Kyū rikugun tokubetsu
kōgekitai chiran kichi (Record of departed spirits: Former Army Special
Attack Corps Chiran Base). Revised edition, originally published in 2004. Chiran Town, Kagoshima
Prefecture: Chiran Tokkō Irei Kenshō Kai.
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