This series is about the Japanese home front in and around Sasebo, Japan during World War II. It is not a condemnation or critique of actions taken by either side during the war but rather a look at the civilian perspective of the war and the still surviving facilities that supported the war effort.

Once the Command Center’s main plot room with a large map of Kyushu, only the bare walls and stripped columns remain of what was once a bustling, modern and surprisingly well decorated space.

Shizue Fujisawa wasn’t the only person who’d assumed that the Americans wouldn’t bomb Sasebo the night of June 28-29, 1945. The staff of Japan’s southern air defense command center, under the leadership of Sasebo Naval District Commander Vice Adm. Rokuzo Sugiyama, had also concluded a raid wouldn’t happen to Sasebo that night due to the rainy and overcast weather, so local air defenses were not on high alert when the bombers came.

The bombers flew over Sasebo and the defenders responded with badly aimed anti-aircraft artillery and rockets. The heavy cloud cover made it difficult to pinpoint the attackers and rendered the search lights useless. Likewise, the few intercepting night fighters that went up couldn’t take down the B-29s. According to the 73^rd Bombardment Wing’s after-action report they lost no aircraft to enemy action that night.

The 73^rd had targeted the Sasebo Naval Arsenal, military barracks, dockyards and other facilities and hit them with 1,077.1 tons of incendiaries with varying degrees of success. The dockyards suffered little damage and a quarter of the arsenal was damaged as well, but they took out half of the barracks along with nearly half of Sasebo’s urban center.

But there was one target they missed without realizing it. That southern air defense command center, which coordinated all lookouts, radar stations, searchlights, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aircraft defending Kyushu from attack, was in Sasebo; buried in the hill under the Sasebo Naval District Headquarters. It would one day see American fire, but not that night.

Work began on the Sasebo Air Defense Command Center in February 1944. It was a direct result of Japan’s defeat at Midway two years earlier. Realizing that war may come to the Japanese home islands someday, the government created a series of command centers at key army and navy installation around the country that could coordinate and direct all of the nation’s naval air defenses. Sasebo was the logical choice for a command center as it the headquarters of an eponymous naval district, home to one of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s four naval arsenals and the Hario Wireless Transmitting Station, which was one of the most powerful radio transmitters in Dai Nippon.

Though resources were growing scarce, the navy went all out in the construction of this modern facility which boasted amenities such as air conditioning, heating, flush-toilets and rubber floors, which were uncommon at the time. For protection, the outer walls were a meter thick and the iron used in its construction was three times as strong as today’s current standard.

Commander’s personal entrance, which was located within a hall. All other personnel had to use the external ‘air raid shelter’ entrance. Today its outside and adjacent to a smoke pit.

Its ability to communicate was paramount so it possessed its own telephone exchange, 30 radio receivers and was linked to the Hario Wireless Transmitting Station.

My visit began at the smoking area behind the current JMSDF headquarters, where a few Sailors were taking a break in the shady exposed nook of a bland, windowless concrete building. Mundane is the word for it, except for the thick reddish metal vault door covered with large rivets tucked into the smoke area beside a blue plastic bench and cigarette butt can. The outside of the door has a single handle, but inside are dogs (latches), which can allow it to be locked from the inside only. It looked like it belonged on a warship, not a building. This was the commanding officer’s special entrance to the center. All other personnel had to use the primary entrance under the exposed section of the bunker that juts from the hill below.

We descended two stories on a steep stairwell with a tattered green rubber coating we had to be careful on as some bits were missing. They were also rather short steps made for the average Japanese of the time, who was much shorter than today’s. A surviving decorative touch is the two-tone red and white paint job on the walls, though this was the only paint we’d see here.

After the war, America forces occupied the command center and evaluated it. When they were done, it was set ablaze to prevent future use. It was then for the most part forgotten for decades and remains a slowly deteriorating and charred time capsule from another era.

Our first stop was the operations center. Illuminated by a large globe lamp, the only item in the room, it lit scorched walls and a light fog that evaporated a little after we entered. The coolness of the space was also a welcome respite from the mushi atsuka humid heat outside. Our guide pointed to the floors and noted that this was actually several rooms and the interior walls, are now gone with only sunken lines on the deck denoting where they were.

This was once subdivided into smaller side rooms, note the lines on the floor where walls once were.

Along the walls had been intelligence rooms, a telephone exchange, air raid warning and battery control rooms along with a lounge and kitchen. The central area contained more plots; the focal point was a wall-sized Empire Defense Map showing Kyushu, southern Honshu and Shikoku. Because raiders could be detected long before they got to Kyushu, the map was used to denote the location of inbound aircraft. That information would be plotted and coordinated with the various air defenses run from within this space and shared with the network of military and civilian command centers throughout the country.

It was manned in three shifts of 20-30. This included military personnel and schoolgirls, ones with teachers who stuck up for their students more than Fujisawa’s, who worked in the top secret facility as messengers. During the air raid and after, all reported for duty and for some it would be days before they could leave and let their families know they were still alive. Like Fujisawa they also kept their real jobs secret from their parents, who only knew their daughters did office work on base.

Despite the full anti-air power at their command, the Sasebo center suffered from Japanese relative technological backwardness, making it only moderately effective when compared to its Allied counterparts. Japan lacked automated fire control for air defenses, fire control radars were inaccurate, their aircraft lacked IFF and night fighters were not equipped with radar.

Describing it though, is like describing a ghost. Looking at images of the rooms from 1945 our guide had given us and looking at the spaces now, I could see and imagine what it was like then but it’s all simply gone now. Empty metal brackets hang from overhead, six support columns, two of which were rather decorative, and a large puddle on the floor are all that remain.

As we exited our guide explained that the doors here, not as heavy as the outside but still meant to withstand a fight, could only be locked from the inside to make it harder to invade.

One of the doors leading to the main room, it could only be locked from the inside. It was thick so that time could be bought to destroy classified material even as Allied forces poured into the surrounding halls.

Yellow wall-mounted lights led us through the corridors that surrounded the central area. Despite the abandonment, there had been a few attempts at re-using the center over the years, but none of them where successful. Though built using steel that could armor a battleship, some parts are now off limits because they’ve collapsed. Any gamer familiar with the Fallout series would feel right at home here.

Our guide also explained that the actual ceiling was lower than what it is now because the maintenance space above it, like in modern offices, was covered with ceiling tiles. Now we could see exposed metal nubs and the remnants of pipes that abruptly ended in nothing.

There is a second level to the facility but it’s inaccessible. At some point after the war it flooded out entirely with fresh water, possibly from an aquifer. JMSDF attempted to dewater in 1963 but after two years with no success gave up. It’s a shame because it’s believed to connect the command center with miles upon miles of underground tunnels running beneath Sasebo. It’s believed that some pass under Nimitz Park, the nearby U.S. military sporting and recreation area, and possibly the current Commander, Fleet Activities Sasebo and other outlying areas once part of the Chinjufu. Occasionally these tunnels are still rediscovered during the construction of new buildings around the city.

There is also another secret a lot closer than the tunnels. Behind one of the walls in the corridor ringing the command center is a room. They know it is there but they cannot find the entrance to it.

One of the command center’s most amusing aspects is the indestructible toilets. Despite the fire, the bathroom is still intact and the white porcelain toilets undamaged, even the wood hardly seems to have been singed, though the walls are blackened. A little cleanup and it would be ready for use again, which wouldn’t be a strange statement if I wasn’t talking about a bathroom that hasn’t been used in 70 years and was set on fire.

On the way out we passed the little remaining machinery here in the former auxiliary generator and ventilation room. The once state-of-the-art ventilation equipment is all that’s left of the facility’s equipment. The only other items here were some modern metal desks and other office furniture stacked in a corner as the empty command center is a good backup storage space.

We exited through the main entrance, which today is hidden in plain sight. Look at it straight on and it’s definitely a bunker with a long slit viewing gallery well off the ground, but it’s been domesticated by the JMSDF. Its top is now a parking lot and the whole structure sits in the shadow of an elevated highway. The bunker entrance itself looks like that of a tool shed. Step inside and you wade through unwanted monitors and random boxes, it isn’t until you hit the reinforced rusted steel doors hidden in the very back that you’d realize you had stumbled into something important.

Taken during my tour, it’s since been cleaned up, the door repainted and a placard out front explains it’s importance.

Emerging above ground I was greeted by a familiar scene. The route I walk to and from work every day passes by this innocuous door, yet until now I hadn’t known what was behind it. At the time of my visit the bunker wasn’t giving public tours (mine was for research) so I’d never thought I’d get a chance to explore the urban ruins in my own neighborhood.

Today the Air Defense Command Center can be visited as part of an Imperial Japanese Naval Base Sasebo historic walking tour that visits a collection of kaigun-related sites and memorials. (You can do a similiar tour by yourself following our guide here.)

These sites in central Sasebo are easy to see, but there are more in the surrounding greater Sasebo area including a trio of ferroconcrete radio towers rising from the forest near Hario, which were once among the most powerful transmitting stations in Dai Nippon.

If the assumptions are true, the Hario Wireless Transmitting Station has an important place in Japanese and American history. On Dec. 2, 1941, it is believed to have relayed a message that set into motion a day that would live in infamy.

Niitakayama Nobore 1208.

The Japanese Homefront Series

The Sasebo Air Raid (Sasebo Peace Museum/Air Raid Reference Room)
Shizue-san the Welder
Sasebo Air Defense Command Center
From Beginning to End (Hario Wireless Transmitting Station and Uragashira Repatriation Center Museum)
Kawatana, Home of Shinyo and the Fish-Shaped Water Bomb
Safe at School (Mukyudo)