It is on the hillside of Baika Mt. in Atami. This mysterious war museum is run by an anonymous person, and a few people from war-bereaved associations visit this museum sometimes. The “Roadside Japan” book showed me this eccentric library, and I visited it in the autumn of 2005. I couldn’t reach this place directly because there was no guide sign on the road. I think the founder of this museum doesn’t want people to visit on a pleasure trip because its theme is so serious.
When I entered the gate of this hidden archive, a middle-aged woman with a sleeved Japanese apron appeared. I paid one thousand yen for the entrance fee to her and she showed me the exhibition route. The five-story pagoda was first. When I opened the door, there were so many old Japanese military goods with a musty smell: the uniform of a tank soldier, a hanging screen with signatures of soldiers leaving for the front, and so on. On the second floor, I found some canteens, trench mortars, and some signboards with rallying cries. The third or fourth floor was the same as this spooky second floor. The top floor had a wooden “Nori-Kiri” Kannon statue. Now, taking photos is totally prohibited inside this tower but I could do it at that time.
I turned back to the main hall and she showed me the way to the room downstairs which was named “Hero’s Room.” Who was the hero for the founder? It was Adolf Hitler! There were so many items related to him like a typewriter which was used to write his main work “Mein Kampf”, his boots, hat, military uniform, and so on. I wonder if these things had really belonged to him. I found other suspicious goods like Stalin’s hat, Napoleon’s cape, and Aron’s rod! You should see these things with your own eyes if you want to make sure that they are the real thing. Photographing wasn’t allowed in this space even in 2005.
After the “Hero’s Room” where Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 was playing in low volume as the BGM, I climbed up to the main hall. The woman gave me a cup of coffee and I tasted it at the Yakusugi ceder table with a panoramic view of Atami and Sagami Bay. I asked her who built this museum but she dodged my question as if she also didn’t know the real answer. As I told you before, there was no guide sign. But now you have a convenient car navigation system with GPS. You can input the latitude and longitude, and you will reach there automatically. To put it another way, it is very hard to get there without GPS. Good luck!
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