CHIRAN, Kagoshima Pref. -- An aerial view of the Satsuma Peninsula, glimpsed from a light, low-flying craft such as a glider, would reveal a pastoral landscape of striking warmth, with green volcanic peaks, white stucco-faced houses and time-worn hot-spring inns tucked away down leafy lanes. In this emerald garden, the oil refineries and fuel dumps of Kagoshima to the north seem a world away.
Such must have been the view, little changed today, that the tokko-tai (special attack forces), better known in the West as kamikaze pilots, flying from Chiran and other bases in southern Kyushu, would have taken in on the first leg of their one-way missions. Although Chiran is more strongly associated in the traveler's mind with walled lanes, one-story samurai villas, tea plantations and a set of wonderfully intricate, miniature Edo Period gardens, than World War II aviation, visitors should not pass up the opportunity to view the Tokko Heiwa Kaikan (Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots), a 3-km taxi or bus ride into the hills north of town.
The grounds of the museum, as meticulously laid out as the Commonwealth Graves Commission cemeteries for fallen Allied soldiers and personnel found in Thailand and Myanmar, are a fitting, if at times perplexing memorial to the 1036 tokko-tai pilots who flew from Chiran.