Japan Tour 2025
September 26, 2025
The Cathedral School ‘Japan Tour’ students have featured on several local and national evening news programs, whilst visiting the Kaiten Memorial Museum on Ozushima. Head of Languages at Cathedral, Linda Pradhan described the event as a significantly proud moment for the students and the school. ‘In a lovely coincidence, the journalist from one TV channel had visited the Cathedral as part of our school exchange program in 2016 and home-stayed with the Arratoon family.’
The original post can be found here.
The footage translates to:
This is the first time an English-speaking group has visited.
Junior and senior high school students from Australia visited Ōzushima Island in Shūnan City to learn about the human torpedoes known as “Kaiten.”
The 26 students who visited Ōzushima are from The Cathedral School in Queensland, Australia.
The Cathedral School has had a sister school relationship with Sakuragaoka High School in Shūnan City and has continued exchanges for nearly 30 years through programs like student exchange.
Ōzushima once hosted a training base for the human torpedoes called “Kaiten,” where 145 young crew members and maintenance staff lost their lives. The students reflected on the kamikaze soldiers as they looked at letters addressed to families and photographs.
“I was really shocked that so many people lost their lives. They were so young when they died, and I think their families must have been incredibly sad.”
“They trained knowing they were going to die. Because they were so young, I think it was heartbreaking for their families as well. Ōzushima is a very sad place.”
The students also visited the training base and renewed their thoughts and hopes for peace.
According to Shūnan City, this is the first time a group from an English-speaking country has visited the Kaiten Memorial Museum.