The old clubhouse of the Fujisawa Country Club. After the country club shut down, this building was a military headquarters, an orphanage, a school, a college dining hall, a city office, a physical training camp, and a dormitory for the Japan National Football Team at around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. There are plans to restore the building for the upcoming 2020 games.
Mr. Krigbaum often writes about WWII ruins and the remains of wartime facilities down where he lives in Kyushu. Today, it is my turn to write about the remains of a wartime facility not far from where I live in central Kanagawa Prefecture. Since I live rather close to Tokyo, between firebombing and post-war re-purposing of land, not much remains from that time. But if you know where to look, and you do a little research, there are remains to be found. Please note: much of the information in this article comes from numerous, roughly translated, Japanese sources. My Japanese is a bit rough, and so is Google translate, so some of the specific details may not be perfect, so I apologize for any small mistakes. My information should still be pretty close.
The front doors of the Green House, formerly the Fujisawa Country Club clubhouse. This building has seen a lot of history, and hopefully it will see a lot more.
The story of the Fujisawa Air Field begins with golf. In 1930, an organization was formed with the intention of building a world class golf course on a scenic hilltop on the north side of the city of Fujisawa, a beautiful coastal city an hour train ride outside of Tokyo. The course would have views of Mt. Fuji, nearby Enoshima Island, and much of the coastline of Sagami Bay. The New Grand Hotel in Yokohama, given management of the new course, hired famed architect Antonin Raymond to design a Spanish-colonial style clubhouse. The Fujisawa Country Club opened to much fanfare in April of 1932 and would be visited by celebrities, athletes, and politicians in the years to come. But its glory would be short-lived as the needs of the Pacific War became more important than the pleasures of golf.
The back of a small hillside bunker, all that remains of the military presence at the Fujisawa Airfield.
By 1941, the needs of the war had already forced the country club to start using portions of their land for agriculture and livestock, and horse drawn carriages ferried people to and from the local train stations as there was no gasoline for private cars. Even golf balls themselves were in short supply and a lot of people started suggesting that the land could be better used for non-recreational purposes. In 1943, only 11 years after it opened, the Fujisawa Country Club was ordered closed and the land was given to the Imperial Japanese Navy for the construction of a new airfield. The new facility opened in June of 1944 as Fujisawa Airfield under the 13th Air Squadron, which was later combined with other local training units to become the 20th Air Corps which used the old clubhouse, known at this time as the Green House, as their headquarters. The role of the 20th Air Corps was the training ground crews in the repair and maintenance of aircraft radios, early Japanese airborne radar sets, and wireless controlled munitions. Of course, aircraft that actually used these advanced technologies were short supply in 1944, so the 10,000 students that trained at the Fujisawa Airfield often practiced on non-flying wrecks. In fact, the 20th Air Corps had only one airworthy plane, a Kyushu K11W bomber trainer. Of course, this didn’t last long as in August 1945, the war ended and the 20th was disbanded when the airfield was turned over to the U.S Army.
The front of a remaining bunker, seen from the road through the Fujisawa Sports Park complex. The small hill and the bunker are roped off and not accessible by the public.
Post war, the Army Air Corps briefly used the Fujisawa Airfield, but since the much larger and more built up Atsugi Air Base was nearby, Fujisawa was soon abandoned for the larger facility. Initially, the land was returned to the parent company that had previously run the Fujisawa Country Club, but this sparked a debate over how the land should be used. Eventually, it was decided to try and use part of the land as a school. In the meantime, a local charity, with government support, used one of the barracks as an orphanage, eventually establishing permanent facilities in nearby Ayase City, where they still exist as Karaike Gakuen. Local farmers also began encroaching on the land, planting crops and grazing animals on the property. Ultimately, the golf course never returned, and the airfield was turned over to the city to be used by private pilots, a group of glider enthusiasts, and local industries. The most notable of these local companies was Toyo Air Industry, which was an offshoot of the old Kawasaki Aircraft company. They built a small facility nearby to build and test new aircraft, starting after the ban on new Japanese aircraft was lifted in 1952. The company built licensed copies of the Fletcher FD-25 light attack/training aircraft and developed two prototypes for an independently designed prop driven trainer, the TT-10. A handful of FD-25s were sold to Vietnam and Cambodia, and the TT-10 never went into production, with one of the two TT-10 prototypes lost in a crash. Finally, Toyo shut down operations in 1969 and was dissolved. Fujisawa Airfield was left abandoned, the land was portioned up, and everything was sold off. Today, where the runway once sat is a large manufacturing plant and a high school, and the administrative side of the former air station is now a Kanagawa sports training facility and park which contains one of the Japan National Soccer Team’s training facilities. Of course, all of this new development means very little remains of the old airfield. A hardened bunker can still be seen in the sports park, but it is roped off and can’t be accessed. A fuel bunker was found at a construction site a decade ago, but I couldn’t find any current information about its location or continued existence. Oddly enough, the old clubhouse still exists in the center of the Fujisawa Sports Park, though the interior has been renovated several times over the years as it has been re-purposed several times, serving as a school, women’s college, a city office, a college dining hall, a security office, a weight lifting training and competition venue, and a training facility for the Japan National Football Team. Today it sits empty and in disrepair, with the entrances and grounds roped off with caution tape.
There is one other interesting piece of history surrounding the old airfield. One time when it found itself on the international stage, and the simple farmers and townspeople looked out and saw something big in their back yard. In September of 1959, CIA Pilot Tom Crull, after flying over the Soviet Union, experienced a failure in the fuel systems of his U-2 spy plane and was forced to land. He found himself unable to make it to the Atsugi Air Base and instead set his aircraft down on the runway in Fujisawa – fittingly landing during the Japan Student Flight Federation’s glider take-off and landing training scheduled for that day. U.S. and Japanese officials scrambled to collect both pilot and plane, but before photos wound up in the local Japanese papers. The plane itself was only lightly damaged in the incident, and would soon be returned to service. It would later be shot down over Russia in the infamous U-2 Incident on May 1st, 1960 with pilot Gary Powers at the controls.
Part of an old, reinforced concrete wall in the Fujisawa Sports park. The old track bleachers that sat here were recently removed, exposing this old wall. the style and composition match the nearby bunker leading me to wonder, could this be part of an old barracks re-purposed as supports for stands?
Today there is little left of the old airfield, but its memory lives on. The Tokyo Metropolitan College’s Aviation Engineering Department has the lone surviving TT-10 and one of the protoype FD-25s that were built and flown in Fujisawa, and the Green House, though locked up and empty, still stands, and its time is not yet finished. With the 2020 Olympics returning to Tokyo and the greater Kanto area, there is talk of restoring the old Country Clubhouse to its former glory as part of the renovation of the sports park facilities in preparation for the games. With luck, this important part of local history will be and remain open to the public and will continue on as a museum of local history, including the memory of Fujisawa Airfield.
The Green House, originally the clubhouse for the Fujisawa Country Club sits awaiting restoration in Fujisawa, Japan. The building got its nickname, according to local lore, from a group of catholic nuns who would take their morning walk around the golf course before the war. They called this building the Green House after its green roof tiles and the name stuck and is still used today.