Chiran Kamikaze museum

Chiran Kamikaze museum & shrine - darkometer rating : 4 - The premier memorial space in Japan devoted to those 'special attack groups' known as Kamikaze pilots. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Chiran, located near the southernmost tip of Japan 's southern mainland island of Kyushu, served as one of the training centres and bases from which Kamikaze missions were flown in the latter periods of WWII , esp. during the battle of Okinawa . In that strange typically Japanese way of jealous competition between Army and Navy, the Chiran museum focuses only on the Army's Kamikaze pilots and ignores the Navy's even greater involvement in that tragic strategy. Still, it is the most visited such place there is, and thus of the greatest importance, esp. for domestic Japanese tourism and school trips. Well over half a million visitors are received by the museum annually, which officially carries the name "Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots". It was opened in 1975, enlarged in 1986 and further expanded technically in 2008 to accommodate foreign visitors, though still by far the majority of visitors are Japanese. Like other "peace museums" in Japan it stresses that its mission is to promote "eternal peace" and to "present true facts", to quote from the museum's English leaflet. How compatible these two aims are with each other, or how consistent with the actual glorification of the pilots' sacrificing their lives for the cause of a war that was basically already lost, is left rather open.