Hakkōda Snow March Disaster Site (八甲田雪中行軍遭難地)

In January of the thirty-fifth year of Meiji, two hundred and ten soldiers of the Aomori Fifth Infantry Regiment stepped into the mountains of Hakkōda. It was a training exercise — preparation for the winters of Russia. But the mountain did not let them return.

Within only a few days of their departure, a savage blizzard consumed the column. The chain of command collapsed, and all sense of direction was lost. The soldiers wandered on through the snow; some, it is said, froze solid where they stood. Only eleven survived. One hundred and ninety-nine never came back — it remains the largest mountaineering disaster in the history of the modern era.

To this day, in one corner of the Hakkōda range, near the Dōzō Chaya rest house, there stands a bronze statue cast in the likeness of Captain Kannari (神成大尉), the company commander who perished in the cold. On nights of blizzard, it is whispered that shadowy figures drift around the statue, and those who draw close are said to lose all sense of direction.

Near the site of the disaster, snow is said to spiral in great eddies even on windless nights. The old people of the region have long warned against venturing carelessly into that place, saying that the mountain is calling the soldiers back. Even now, accounts do not cease — of those who heard the sound of military boots approaching from within the white haze.

The sky those men looked up at last must have been grey, without end. The snowfields of Hakkōda are beautiful, and they are quiet — so very, terribly quiet.