Wakayama Gokoku Jinja Yokaren Monument
Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture
Wakayama Gokoku Jinja is a Shintō shrine dedicated to persons from Wakayama
Prefecture who died in wars to defend Japan. The Yokaren Monument is one
of several monuments at Wakayama Gokoku Jinja, located in the park surrounding
Wakayama Castle in Wakayama City.
Yokaren is the abbreviated Japanese name for the Navy's Preparatory Flight
Training Program, which started in 1930 and greatly expanded from 1943 until the
end of WWII. Many Yokaren graduates died in suicide attack operations carried
out near the end of the war.
On the left side of the base of the Yokaren Monument, a black plaque with white engraved characters
has the
following wording:
The Navy's Hikō Yoka Renshūsei (Flight Preparatory Training Program
Students), or Shōnen Hikōhei (Youth Pilots), became known by the shortened
name of Yokaren. The program's aim was to provide early training for gifted
youths to become aircraft crewmen. From 1930 when this system started until
the end of the Greater East Asia War, youths during training aspired to wear
the seven buttons each with a cherry blossom on an anchor. On the basis of
superior skills, an enthusiastic attack spirit, and a noble spirit of
self-sacrifice, they endured training day and night and left the nest for
the air.
After the first overseas bombing campaign as sea eagles during the China
Incident, their fearsome reputation spread throughout the world based on
aerial attacks off the coasts of Hawaii and Malaya at the war's outbreak as
they formed the core of our country's air power. As the war situation
indicated the odds were against them and as the enemy approached our
mainland, they turned themselves into bombs and were destroyed for an
eternal cause. Sparing neither their bodies nor their lives, they gave their
lives along with special (suicide) attack planes during an unprecedented
national crisis.
Praying for eternal peace and security for their country, they had to die
in battle. We Yokaren graduates, praying that the spirits of these heroes
may eternally rest in peace, erect this monument and dedicate it to their
spirits so they may sleep in the skies.
November 3, 1969
Wakayama Prefecture Yokaren Association
The following last letters were written by a Yokaren graduate from Wakayama
Prefecture who died in a special attack:
Plaque with three Yokaren symbols
(wings, anchor, and cherry blossom)
in front of monument's center black stone tablet
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