Nagaoka · JP

Heiwa-no-Mori (Forest of Peace) Park

Heiwa-no-Mori (Forest of Peace) Park is a riverside memorial in central Nagaoka that preserves the memory of the devastating 1945 air raid and sends a message of peace. Created through a citizen campaign on the raid's 50th anniversary, the park is quietly woven into the banks of the Kaki River, where award-winning landscape design meets deeply personal remembrance. Its two most powerful features are a bronze Peace Statue containing the engraved names of child victims of the raid, and a second-generation sapling grown from the famous Aogiri tree that survived the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Each summer, the park hosts an emotional peace concert with floating lanterns drifting down the darkened river.