Nemuro Peninsula Chashi Sites is a grouping of twenty-four Ainu chashi on the Nemuro Peninsula in Nemuro, Hokkaidō, Japan that have been jointly designated a national Historic Site, out of a total of thirty-two chashi sites identified in the city. The grouping is also the first entry on the Japan Castle Foundation's 2006 list of Japan's Top 100 Castles.
Typically found at elevations of 5 metres to 50 metres above sea level, they are mostly situated on bluffs overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk, reinforced with U-shaped or semicircular moats. Relative to many of those elsewhere on the island, their state of preservation is good. They are thought to date from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and are associated with the 1789 Menashi–Kunashir rebellion.
References:Towering 52 meters above the sea, Bengtskär lighthouse is the tallest one in Scandinavia. The building started in in 1905 after the shipwreck of S/S Helsingfors and was completed in 1906. The lighthouse was designed by architect Florentin Granholm. On December a special petrol lantern, designed and built in Paris, was brought to Bengtskär and installed atop the tower.
German fleet bombarded Bengstkär in the First World War in 1914. Since the Gulf of Finland was heavily mined, it was not until 1919 that the surrounding seas were declared safe for shipping, that the light was lit again.
After the war the military value of Bengtskär increased as part of the defence system of independent Finland. In Second World War (1941) Soviet Union made a suprise attack to island. After a bloody battle, the small Finnish garrison emerged victorious. Intermittent repairs to the facility continued during the post-war period.