Yokaren Peace Memorial Museum

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Investigado y escrito por Hinato

Yokarenwar memorialAminaval aviationmuseum

Photo: Motokoka / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · original

The Yokaren was the Imperial Navy's preparatory flight training programme, and from 1939 the main training base was at Tsuchiura, in what is now Ami. Boys entered at fourteen and fifteen. By the end of the war a large proportion of those who passed through had been killed, many of them in the special attack units of the final year.

The museum is built on part of the former base and is organised around seven themes — the entrance examination, daily life, training, letters home, the special attacks, the losses, and what came after. Much of what is displayed is personal: uniforms, notebooks, letters written by teenagers to their mothers. It is a memorial rather than a celebration and does not attempt to make the story heroic. It is a difficult ninety minutes and it is one of the more honest war museums in Japan.

Información esencial

Horario

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Last entry 4:30 PM

Cerrado: Closed Mondays, or the following day when the Monday is a national holiday | December 29 – January 3

Entrada

¥500 adults | ¥300 high school, junior high and elementary school students | Preschoolers free

Mejor temporada

Year-round | Indoor site

Duración de la visita

90 minutes

Cómo llegar

Información de acceso

Ami, Inashiki District. Car recommended; roughly from Tsuchiura Station. Closed Mondays, or the following day when the Monday is a national holiday, and December 29 – January 3. Admission ¥500 adults and ¥300 for high school, junior high and elementary school students; preschoolers free. Cards and QR payments accepted.

Guía privilegiada

**Allow ninety minutes and expect it to be heavy.** The seven rooms are arranged as a sequence and the last of them deals with the special attack units. It is not a place to rush or to visit at the end of a long day. **The letters are the exhibit.** Uniforms and models are present, but what stays with visitors is correspondence written by fifteen-year-olds. Almost all of it is in Japanese; ask about available translation aids at the desk. **It sits on the actual site.** Part of the former Tsuchiura naval air training base survives around the museum, and there is a memorial and a restored aircraft nearby. Walking that ground is part of the visit. **Closed Mondays.** Standard, but worth noting because there is very little else nearby to fall back on.

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