Discovered: forgotten Japanese midget submarine base built for WW2 suicide missions
- The submarines would have been tasked with attacking the Allied invasion fleet that was expected to try to land forces on Kyushu
- Nearly all military sites were identified and razed by the Allied Occupation forces after Japan’s surrender in 1945
A military analyst described the discovery of the base, more than 75 years after Japan’s surrender, as “remarkable” and potentially a source of new information about the actions of the Japanese forces in the final stages of the war.
Some details of the base survived in Imperial Japanese Navy records but it had been largely forgotten by local residents after it was abandoned. Its erasure from local history has been helped by the small island having no residents and being rarely visited, although that changed when six members of the Sengoshi Kaigi Matsue historical group followed a vague report and visited the island for the first time in October, the Asahi newspaper reported.
Subsequent research indicated the base was designed to serve as a training facility for the crews of midget submarines that would be tasked with attacking the Allied invasion fleet that was expected to try to land forces on Kyushu. That mission was code-named Operation Olympic and was the first part of the broader Operation Downfall, which would bring about Japan’s final surrender.