History
Koganei Station opened on 25 March 1893 as a Nippon Railway station; it was nationalised in 1906 and folded into the Tōhoku Main Line in 1909. On 28 July 1945, during the final weeks of the Pacific War, American fighter aircraft chasing an Utsunomiya-bound train strafed the platform after the train stopped at Koganei; some thirty passengers and bystanders died. A memorial called Heiwa no Ishiji stands at the west exit. The station building was rebuilt in 1967, and JR East took over at JNR privatisation on 1 April 1987. With the Oyama Rolling Stock Centre directly north, many trains start, terminate or couple here.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
A monument called Heiwa no Ishiji ("Foundation of Peace") at Koganei's west exit commemorates the roughly thirty civilians killed when US fighters strafed a stopped train at the station on 28 July 1945.