Iimoriyama Hill

At the top of this hill are the graves of 19 boys, members of the Byakkotai ("White Tigers") who committed suicide at this place in 1868. They were part of a larger group of forty boys between the ages of 15 and 17 who were ordered into battle against the Meiji government soldiers by the last of the Aizu clan daimyos, Katamori Matsudaira.

The boys, in their first battle, were defeated and 20 survivors retreated to Iimoriyama Hill. When they got there, exhausted and hungry, to their utter dismay they saw smoke and fires around Tsurugajo Castle below them in the distance. Fearing that the castle had been sacked by their enemies and that all was lost, they decided to commit ritual suicide by hara-kiri (slicing their stomachs open) according to the samurai code.

In fact, at that time, the castle was not on fire making the Byakkotai incident even more tragic.

One boy, Sadakichi Iinuma, survived and so the details of the story were recorded.