AT A GLANCE
Why go?
At the southernmost tip of Peleliu Island, where the coral shore meets the open Pacific, a striking concrete monument gazes back toward Japan. The Memorial to the Western Pacific War Dead (西太平洋戦没者の碑) was erected by the Japanese government in 1985 to honor all who perished in the islands and waters of the Western Pacific during World War II. Designed by the celebrated architect Kikutake Kiyonori, it stands as both a place of mourning and a remarkable piece of modernist architecture set within a landscape scarred by one of the Pacific War's fiercest battles.↗↗
In September 1944, the Battle of Peleliu turned this small coral island into a killing ground. More than 10,000 Japanese soldiers and approximately 1,700 Americans were killed in just over two months of savage fighting. The memorial's inscription makes no distinction of nationality: it remembers all who fell in the Western Pacific theater, a sentiment embodied in its axis facing Japan while overlooking the sea toward Angaur Island, where another 1,200 Japanese soldiers perished.↗↗
