Japanese Maritime Self-Defense: Minesweeping and Subs
The city of Kure, Japan, which lies on the Inland Sea about 14 miles southeast of Hiroshima, was known until the end of World War II primarily as a naval and military center. The Yamato, with her sister ship Musashi the largest battleships ever built, was constructed at the Kure Naval Arsenal, and the nearby Hiro Naval Arsenal built planes and aircraft engines to fuel the Japanese war machine. Although Escort Flotilla 4 and a submarine flotilla of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) are still based in Kure, the city has reinvented itself since the war, in which it was devastated by aircraft from Admiral William F. Halsey Jr.’s U.S. Third Fleet. Kure is now more widely recognized as a center of commercial shipbuilding technology. A strong naval tradition remains, and nowhere is this more evident than in the area’s many naval museums and monuments.
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