Chiran Peace Museum

Chiran was an army airfield, and in the last months of the Pacific war it was the main departure point for special attack sorties against the American fleet at Okinawa. Four hundred and thirty-nine pilots left from here and did not return. Most were in their late teens or early twenties.

The museum holds their letters. That is what it is for and what makes it hard: final messages written to mothers and sisters, many of them by boys who had been in secondary school two years earlier, alongside personal effects, photographs and a recovered aircraft. There is no attempt to glorify and no attempt to explain away; the material is presented and you read it. It is open every day of the year, costs ¥500, and takes as long as you can stand. The preserved samurai gardens of Chiran are ten minutes away, which is a strange pairing and the reason many people see both.