page_title: Kwajalein Atoll
section_title: Wartime memorials
hierarchical_section_title: Kwajalein Atoll / Wartime memorials
caption_attribution_description: English: The so-called "Japanese Cemetery on Kwajalein Atoll, a memorial to the Japanese killed at the battle of Kwajalein.
context_page_description: Kwajalein Atoll is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The southernmost and largest island in the atoll is named Kwajalein Island, which its majority English-speaking residents often called by the shortened name, Kwaj. The total land area of the atoll amounts to just over 6 square miles. It lies in the Ralik Chain, 2,100 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii.
  The US Navy has hosted a naval base on Kwajalein Island, the southernmost part of the atoll, since World War II. It was the final resting place of the German cruiser Prinz Eugen after it survived the Operation Crossroads nuclear test in 1946. In the late 1950s, the US Army took over the base as part of their Nike Zeus anti-ballistic missile efforts, and since then the atoll has been widely used for missile tests of all sorts. Today it is part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, with various radars, tracking cameras, missile launchers and many support systems spread across many islands.
context_section_description: Very few Japanese or Korean remains were ever repatriated from the atoll; thus both Kwajalein and Roi-Namur have ceremonial "cemetery" sites to honor this memory. The memorial on Kwajalein was constructed by the Japan Marshall Islands War-Bereaved Families Association in the 1960s, and the memorial on Roi-Namur was constructed by American personnel. The memorial sites are dedicated to Japanese souls and to the sacrifices of Koreans, Marshallese, and Americans. U.S. Marine Corps intelligence records and photographs at the U.S. National Archives, together with the testimony of U.S. veterans, indicate that there was a mass-burial site consolidated into one place on Kwajalein islet, at or near the current cemetery. However, remains are scattered throughout the islet, at Roi-Namur, and in places throughout the atoll. Bereaved Japanese and Korean families have mixed sentiments about whether or not to return these remains to their home countries, as none of them are identifiable, and "bone-collecting" missions are sometimes perceived by families as an insult to the dead or a political stunt by the Japanese government.
  Japanese bereaved family members consider the sites of sunken Japanese shipwrecks in Kwajalein lagoon to be sacred gravesites. They object to the activities of American divers who attempt to explore these wrecks.
  A ceremony is held at Japan's Yasukuni Shrine annually in April (originally held in February to coincide with the anniversary of the battle), where the memories of the Japanese soldiers are honored and surviving families offer prayers to their spirits. Small groups of bereaved Japanese families have made pilgrimages to Kwajalein on a semi-annual basis since the 1990s. The first of these groups was the Japan Marshall Islands War-Bereaved Families Association, which negotiated its visit with the U.S. Army as far back as 1964 and made its first visit in 1975 at the invitation of the Kwajalein Missile Range. The bereaved families of conscripted Korean laborers have also recently traveled in groups to the Marshall Islands and other parts of Micronesia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, with funding from the Japanese government, although they have not yet paid a group visit to Kwajalein.
  The United States designated most of the island of Kwajalein and all of Roi-Namur as National Historic Landmarks in 1985, in recognition of the role those places played during World War II. The Kwajalein designation includes only the historical 1944 shape of the island, which has been enlarged since then by dredging and fill.
caption: Site of the "Japanese Cemetery" on Kwajalein built as a memorial to war dead on the atoll
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