Hikarigaoka (Former Grant Heights) about 60 years ago and today

History of Hikarigaoka (Former Grant Heights)

Hikarigaoka, in the northern part of Nerima Ward, is a town of danchi (public housing complexes) and a park spreading over the Musashino Plateau. Over a little more than 80 years this land has changed its use four times: from fields to an army airfield, to family housing for the US military, to grassland, and then to the danchi. In every era the replacement took place within almost the same frame. The airfield set the frame, and according to Nerima Ward, the single road running north-south through the town is the trace of the runway of Narimasu Airfield. In the era of the postwar housing, it was also a place cut off from the surrounding town, so much so that the ward newsletter describes it as an area of extraterritoriality.

The fields before the airfield

The c. 1936-42 photograph is one taken before the airfield was completed. Small fields divided into strips and squares fill almost the whole frame, and the woods around homesteads are scattered here and there as black masses. Until the early 1930s this area was a farming village called Kami-Nerima Village, and the photograph preserves that appearance as it was. One thin road runs east to west toward the top, and in the upper right corner rows of houses continue along the road. The center catches the eye. The field lots are hard to read only there, and a whitish, bright surface spreads in a shape close to an oval. Its tone clearly differs from the dark fields on the north side, but you cannot tell from the photograph alone whether it is the start of development or a difference of crops or season. It is certain that at this point neither the straight line of a runway nor rows of buildings appear yet.

The airfield was built by the army in 1943 for the defense of the capital, on land spanning Doshida, Tagara and Takamatsu. About 80 households were evicted at that time. The ward newsletter carries a recollection that nearby residents pulled military aircraft to the revetments that protected the aircraft from air raids. From completion to the end of the war there were only about two years.

Housing with the runway at its core

In the 1945-50 photograph, a long white north-south rectangle appears in the center where fields had spread, and a single axis runs vertically through its middle. Inside the rectangle a grid of roads has been drawn, but buildings are still sparse. On the north side, several streets draw curves, and small houses begin to stand in rows. In the upper right there is a corner where long, narrow buildings of the same shape line up neatly. From the east of the frame, a thin line runs into the right of the center. Soon after the end of the war, a railway to carry construction materials for the housing was laid from Kami-Itabashi Station, and this line is thought to be that railway. Outside the rectangle there are still fields and homestead woods.

The housing was completed in June 1948 and was called Grant Heights, after Grant, the 18th President of the United States. In the 1961-69 photograph, the inside of the rectangle is filled with small houses. Houses that look single-story line up regularly along the north-south streets, and similar houses continue along the curving streets on the north side too. Toward the northeast of the center there are a wide rectangle like a sports ground and large buildings, and the row of long, narrow buildings in the upper right also remains. Outside the housing, small clusters of houses increase among the fields, and in the lower left corner several white round storage tanks line up. In the photograph of this era you can clearly see that the shape of the lots differs inside and outside the housing.

In 1959 the relocation of the housing to Yokota Air Base and elsewhere began, and in time a movement demanding its return arose. In 1968 the US military agreed to the return, and in the following year, 1969, the area was named "Hikarigaoka" as a name symbolizing a town of greenery and sunshine. After a first return in 1972, about 182 hectares were returned in full on September 30, 1973.

Ten years covered with grass

1974-78 shows the former site shortly after its return. In the southern half of the rectangle the houses have almost disappeared, and only the grid of the old streets remains as lines on pale brown bare ground. Vacant land stands out in the northern half too, and at the upper left edge there is an oval running track. In the upper right four high-rise slab-shaped residential buildings line up. The band along the top edge was taken on a different day and appears purplish. The surroundings are already city area, and fields remain only as fragmented lots.

By 1979-83 the former site has turned an even greenish brown. Grass and low shrubs spread out, and the grid of the old streets shows through. After the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's development plan was adopted as an urban planning decision in 1979, construction of a large white rectangle is under way in a corner toward the north. It took about ten years after the return before the site of the housing became a town.

Dividing between the danchi and the park

The shape of the town begins to show in 1984-86. A wide road crosses east to west just north of the location, and high-rise residential buildings line up west and southwest of it. The northern zone has become a park with woods, lawns and an oval track, and part of it opened in December 1981 as the Tokyo Metropolitan Hikarigaoka Park. From the middle of the frame, the shadow of a thin, tall structure stretches in a single streak to the northwest. It is thought to be the chimney of the waste incineration plant completed in October 1983. In the same year, 1983, residents began moving into the danchi in Hikarigaoka 5-chome.

In 1987-90, high-rise residential buildings fill both sides of the north-south axis that was the runway, leaving no gaps. The axis has been kept as the backbone of the town, and the woods of the park to the north have grown denser. Inside the park an oval track and a square plaza sit side by side, and along the western and southern edges of the group of residential buildings several square buildings with white flat roofs are placed. In 1991 Toei Subway Line 12, later the Oedo Line, opened from Nerima to Hikarigaoka.

In today's photograph, the park to the north is covered with dense woods, keeping the outline of a rectangle with rounded corners, with the square plaza and the oval track contained inside it. According to the ward newsletter, the trees at the time of the opening had just been planted and were small, and even in the 1984-86 photograph the woods were only clustered here and there, but now the tree crowns join up and the ground can hardly be seen. Between the high-rise buildings at the center, a north-south green strip runs straight through. The area occupied by the park and the danchi almost overlaps the area left vacant as the former site in 1974-78, and the border with the fine rows of houses around it has become the edge of the town as it is. The white round storage tanks in the lower left and the four residential buildings in the upper right continue to appear in the same places from the old eras on.