Chiran Triangular Barracks Site Monument
Special Attack Corps pilots who made sorties from Chiran Air Base for suicide
attacks in the spring of 1945 slept
in camouflaged barracks built partly underground. A monument has been erected at
the site of one of these barracks. A plaque next to the monument gives the
site's history:
The triangular barracks were the quarters for
Special Attack Corps pilots at the end of the Pacific War. They were scattered in pine
groves around the airfield. The wooden barracks, built half underground where
only the triangular roofs could be seen, were camouflaged with large
trees put on top of the roofs. This is the site where one of the triangular barracks was located.
As we remember the feelings of those pilots and console
their spirits, this is a monument where we pray for the eternal repose of
their souls.
Erected in March 1982
Chiran Special Attack Memorial Society
The two lanterns in front of the main monument were added in the summer of
1985 through the efforts of Jirō Kōsaka, who served in Chiran in 1945 and has
written three books about Special Attack Corps pilots in Chiran and other Army air bases. The lanterns have
the inscription: "These tears stored in vain with no time to flow."
The right lantern has only kanji (Chinese characters) for this
inscription, and the left lantern has the same inscription written out in hiragana
(cursive Japanese phonetic characters).
The monument is located about 45 minutes by foot from the
Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots [1]. There is a full-size replica of a
triangular barrack next to the museum building (see two photos below).
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Replica of
Triangular
Barrack
(exterior)
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| Replica of
Triangular
Barrack
(interior)
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A sign on one end of the reconstructed triangular
barrack gives the following explanation:
The triangular barracks were the quarters of
Special Attack Corps pilots. In order to deceive the enemy, they built bunkers half
underground in the middle of pine groves and camouflaged them by covering the
roofs with young cedar trees.
The pilots who gathered together from various places
died a glorious death far away in the clouds of the Okinawan skies after
spending two or three days here. On the night before their sorties, they held
farewell parties in these barracks, where they sang military songs and wrote
their farewell letters in dim light under a bare light bulb as they drank
sake. Then they made sorties.
A triangular barrack has been reconstructed
here as a reminder of those days.
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