Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

• Ibusuki City Kagoshima Prefecture
• Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial
• The Memorial
• Tara Beach
• Chiringashima Island
• Memorial Services
• Access
• Japan Aviation Museums
• Japan Museums

Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture, 指宿海軍航空隊基地跡, 指宿市, 鹿児島県

Johannes Schonherr

In November 2019, I went on a one week exploration trip through Kyushu with German documentary film director Lutz Dammbeck. Our mission was to do research on the remains of World War II era Tokkotai Kamikaze air fields. Tokkotai Kamikaze were military pilots who went onto suicide missions in their attempts to destroy American aircraft carriers and battle ships. In the West, they are better known as Kamikaze Pilots.

In a loose series, I cover some of the most remarkable places we visited.

Another entry in the series is the text The Entaigo (Bunkers) of Usa, Oita Prefecture

Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial, Kagoshima Prefecture

Ibusuki City, Kagoshima Prefecture

The sweeping Kinko Bay (aka Kagoshima Bay) divides the southern end of Kyushu, Japan's southern-most main island into two parts, the Satsuma Peninsula to the west and the Osumi Peninsula to the east.

Ibusuki city is located at the southern end of the Satsuma Peninsula, facing both Kinko Bay and the East China Sea and thus covering the western edge of the mouth of Kinko Bay.

To Ibusuki belongs Mount Kaimon, located right on the shore of the East China Sea , the dominant mountain of the area as well as tiny Nishi Oyama Station on the JR Ibusuki Makurazaki Line, Japan's southern-most train station (not counting the Yui Monorail in Naha, Okinawa).

Today, Ibusuki is a popular onsen hot spring resort surrounded by scenic landscape. Large hot spring hotels dot the coastline, offering grand views over Kinko Bay.

Lutz Dammbeck and I stayed in one of those, the Ibusuki Sea Side Hotel. Both our rooms had balconies overlooking Kinko Bay.

The large hot spring bath on the ground floor offered the same view when I took my onsen baths in the morning, just with the added benefit of bright sunrises unfolding over the bay while I was lounging in the hot water.

Entrance to the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

The Ibusuki map handed out by the hotel had a tiny propeller mark printed on it, marking a spot just about one kilometer north of the hotel. It gave no further explanation.

The mark on the map fit, however, more or less exactly the location of one of the WWII Tokkotai Kamikaze air bases I had researched before: the former Ibusuki Naval Air Base.

It was a short drive with our rental car getting there from the hotel. Right behind a tourist complex named the Kyukamura Ibusuki Hotel (marked on road signs in English as Ibusuki Vacation Village), stone markers pointed out the entrance to the memorial site.

Parking the car at Kyukamura's lot, we entered the site. Shinto shrine style stone lanterns guided the way through a light pine forest towards a little hill.

A steel door at the foot of the hill allowed peeks into a tunnel crossing underneath. I read later that that tunnel served as an air raid shelter during the active time of the air base in World War II.

Just as we arrived on top of the hill, an elderly man was slightly rearranging the flowers placed in front of the memorial, than saluting the monument - and by that, the tokkotai kamikaze fighters who died on their suicide missions during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Turning around and spotting two foreigners, he quickly came over and we had a nice little chat. He was one of the volunteer caretakers of the site, he said.

He pointed towards the towering Uomidake Cliffs on the other side of the road and explained that those huge scars on the rock wall were the result of American bombings in 1945. Those boulders in the park right below the cliffs were blasted out of the cliff during those attacks.

As for the Tokkokai Kamikaze pilots starting out from Ibusuki, he said, "none returned. 100% none. They all died in the Battle of Okinawa".

He then referred us to the multiple displays at the memorial itself. There, we would find all the information we needed.

Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

The Memorial

The memorial itself consists of the stone monument, erected in 1971 in honor of the young pilots who went from Ibusuki on their suicidal sorties during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, as well as honoring those who died in American bombing raids targeting the Ibusuki Naval Air Base.

Next to the memorial stone stands a statue of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. A severely bent propeller, remnant of a crashed warplane, is also on display.

The most interesting background information on the site however is provided by a glass display box, featuring historic photographs of the Ibusuki air base during World War II.

The Ibusuki air base had no runway on land. All tokkotai kamikaze airplanes heading out from here were seaplanes, the waters right off Tara Beach, the beach bordering the base, served as the runway. Many of those seaplanes were outdated and in very poor shape, the display notices.

82 tokkotai kamikaze pilots died on their Okinawa sorties from the Ibusuki base. More than 100 people on the ground were killed in American bombing raids, the deadliest taking place on May 5th 1945.

Image of three airmen at the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

Tara Beach

Today, Tara Beach is largely a long concrete walkway frequented by joggers from nearby hotels. The concrete ends at the memorial site and gives way to the original sand and stones.

No buildings of the original air base remain. Walking along the beach, a rusty iron rod protruding from somewhere underground caught my attention. Was that a remnant of the old base?

The scenery however was beautiful. The beach, the hills in the distance on the other side of the bay, the cliffs right behind us. From time to time, a large ferry sailed by, bound for Tanegashima or Yakushima, perhaps, islands further south.

Tara Beach with mysterious iron rod sticking from the sand, Ibusuki
View towards Kinko Bay from the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial

Chiringashima Island

The former Ibusuki Naval Air Base is a nature park today, belonging to the Kirishima - Kinkowan National Park.

Tara Beach ends at Cape Tara from where small Chiringashima Island is in clear view. Chiringashima is an uninhabited island which can be visited on foot from March to October.

At that time of the year, an 800 meter long sandbar known as Chiringashima Suna no Michi (Chiringashima Sand Road) connects Cape Tara to the island, allowing crossing at low tide.

The hours of the tide change by the day. An information board on Tara Beach displays the schedule.

The board claims that the crossing times are also available on the internet at www.city.ibusuki.lg.jp/chirin/i-mode/main.htm but the web page seems only to be active from March to October. At the time of writing, it could not be accessed.

Since Lutz and I were visiting Ibusuki in November, all we could see were whirls of water covering the sandbar between Tara Beach and Chiringashima.

Uomidake Cliffs, Ibusuki, Kagoshima Prefecture

Memorial Services

A memorial ceremony is held annually on May 27th at the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial, commemorating the young tokkotai kamikaze pilots who died on their missions flying out of Ibusuki as well as those who died on the ground while servicing the Ibusuki Naval Air Base.

View towards Chiringashima Island from Cape Tara at high tide, Ibusuki

Access - Getting There

Take a JR train from Kagoshima Chuo Station (the southern terminus of the Kyushu Shinkansen from Hakata Station in Fukuoka) to Ibusuki Station on the Ibusuki Makurazaki Line. Travel time is about 70 minutes.

From Ibusuki Station, the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial site is about a 10 minute ride by taxi.

Visits to the memorial site are free of charge.

Other Japan World War II & Airplane Museums

Visitors to Japan interested in the history of World War II should visit the Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima Prefecture, the Yamato Battleship Museum in Kure, Yasukuni Shrine, the Yushukan War Memorial Museum and the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery all three in Tokyo as well as the Peace Museums in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which commemorate the atomic bombings of those cities in August, 1945.

On Okinawa, where the main ground fighting between US and Japanese forces took place in Japan there are a number of sites relating to World War II including the Peace Memorial Museum on Mabuni Hill and the Former Japanese Navy Underground HQ in the suburbs of Naha.

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Gifu-Kakamigahara Air & Space Museum
JAL Sky Museum
Tokorozawa Aviation Museum

Warplane propeller at the Ibusuki Naval Air Base Memorial