A 40-minute train ride away from Hiroshima is the seaside town of Kure, once home to Japan’s premier naval arsenal and home of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s most powerful warship, battleship Yamato. In case new visitors weren’t sure this was a navy town they’re greeted by one of Japan’s more unique sights right after leaving Kure Station. On one side of the road is a building with battleship parts out front and on the other is an (iron) fish out of water, a four-story tall, 2,200-ton, black and red submarine resting in a cradle. If there’s any place to learn about the history of Japanese naval power from the beginning to today, this is it.

Welcome to Kure, homeport of Japanese naval history.

Kure has always been a navy town. One of the original naval districts, a navy base was established here in 1889 and a shipyard or naval arsenal followed in 1903. This arsenal kept Kure at the forefront of naval technology, which would play into the city’s post-World War II reconstruction. It grew to become Japan’s largest naval arsenal, building everything from the smallest midget submarines to the largest battleship ever built, Yamato.

Yamato has an outsized legacy for a ship that did so little, but her construction was an achievement for Japanese naval architects and she’s still the pride and joy of Kure as reflected in their maritime museum, better known as the Yamato Museum.

It’s a repository of Japanese Naval history centered the super battleship. Physically. The focal point of the museum is an 86-foot long model of the battleship. (That’s six feet longer than a real PT Boat.) It’s fitting that a model of the biggest battleship ever built also has the biggest battleship model there is. Built over a walk around viewing area, the 1/10 scale model can inspire a puny 1/72 scale modeler to go bigger. To be clear, I’m calling the modeler puny, not his models. This ship is monstrous and needs to be seen to be properly appreciated.

Model aside; this is a modern, engaging, well-organized maritime museum. It explores the history of Kure in an honest and factual manner bereft of the attempted emotional manipulation or jingoism some other military or war-related museums occasionally veer into. I left with an appreciation of Kure’s story, its success, downfall and post-war reconstruction, learning some interesting stuff along the way. This is aided by its varied artifact collection and models.

My favorite space was the large artifact room, which had me smiling like a kid who’d just found a golden ticket and instead of a chocolate factory, it gave entrance to a room full of rare kamikazes. (I was a weird kid, okay?) The most famous kamikazes came from the sky, but in its desperate last year of the war no idea was off the table leading to suicide torpedoes, submarines, motor boats and even divers who would attack with a pole-mounted mine.

Kaiten, unlike the F-104 Starfighter, is a literal missile with a man in it.

The large artifact room contains a Kaiten suicide torpedo, Kairyu suicide midget submarine and a Zero fighter. The Zero has an interesting tale because it survived the war due to not surviving the war. Pilot Sub-Lt. Tsuneo Azuma developed mechanical trouble while flying over Lake Biwa on the evening of Aug. 6, 1945, the day nearby Hiroshima was hit with an atomic bomb, and was forced to make a water landing. It was raised in 1978 and restored to display condition with the help of the man who put it in the lake, retired Japan Air Self-Defense Force Gen. Tsuneo Azuma.

She’s unusual in that she’s a late-war A6M7 Model 62, which was built with an external bomb rack so that it could carry a bomb and be more effective as a kamikaze. It’s not normal to built improvements into a plane so it can crash better, but this is one of the exceptions. The Model 62 is far rarer in museums than the Model 52 Zero, though it is practically identical.

Japan had a love affair with midget submarines I’ll never understand, as for the hundreds built there were relatively few recorded kills and quite a few loses. ‘Midget’ submarines, as the name denotes, are small submarines with a one or two person crew, one or two torpedoes and a limited range. They can be deployed from larger submarines, such as the ones deployed at Pearl Harbor before the battle or in the case of the museum’s Kairyu, used as a form of coastal defense to combat an invasion force, which was their primary use late war. Though not explicitly built as kamikazes like Kaiten or Ohka bombs, Kairyu were supposed to fire their torpedoes then ram their target to ensure its destruction. Held for defense of the home islands, the Kairyu never saw combat.

Kairyu

The midget submarines are a part of local history as Kure manufactured hundreds of them.

For the kids, there’s an interactive play area on the top floor about modern shipbuilding technology. It might be a good place to let them have fun while you get more pictures of the Yamato model from a dive bomber’s eye view.

Yamato isn’t the only battleship with relics here; the biggest and most impressive ones are the anchor, propeller and a 16” naval rifle from battleship Mutsu displayed out front. Mutsu is a bit of an oddity because while very little remains of the other Japanese battleships, a little bit of Mutsu can be seen all over the country. It is partially because of saved bits from her 1930s refit and partially because she sank in Japan after an accident and not in the middle of the ocean, so parts were salvageable. (Come back next week for Mutsu: Japan’s Most Visitable World War II Battleship!)

The U.S. and Japan have come a long way since World War II and this museum is symbolic of that as her sister museum ship was built on the opposite side of the conflict for the same purpose. Yamato and USS Missouri are now sister museums, which I’m not sure how that would sit with some, I think is a good way to show that we can share our past, remember our fallen and move forward together.

When I visited in 2016 there was an exhibit room with small USS Missouri artifacts that compares the two ships’ construction and histories.

Except for the Missouri room, the museum is almost entirely dual language and the translations are very clear and easy to understand.

The Yamato Museum shows us Japan’s naval history from 1889 to 1945, but to learn the rest of the story you have to cross the street and be dwarfed by the Whale of Iron, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Kure Museum.

Like the Kure Maritime Museum embracing its Yamato nickname due to its gigantic model, the JMSDF Kure Museum has equally taken on the Whale of Iron moniker because of its submarine, the former JDS Akishio (SS 579). Akishio is a Yushio-class submarine that served Japan from 1986-2004.

The museum focuses on two missions of the JMSDF, minesweeping and submarine warfare. Mine-sweeping was one of the primary missions of its forerunner agency after World War II. The islands had been effectively blockaded by American mines during World War II and they had the task of making the waterways safe again.

The minesweeping floor has a naval mine petting zoo and a walk around recreation of a minesweeper’s deck. JMSDF is proud of its minesweeping capabilities and its use of them during the Gulf War, so there’s a bit on that and the actual equipment used during the war for you to see and touch.

The submarine floor isn’t as hands on, but compensates with letting you walk through an actual submarine. Despite its size, very little of the sub is open to visit. There’s the control room and some of the quarters and that’s about it. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve ever been on a submarine, but it’s worth swinging through to see how the details differ between our subs and theirs.

If you have the time, and if they haven’t run out, you can partake of a navy tradition and try the kaigun curry in the café.

JMSDF Kure Museum is free.

To see an animated depiction of Kure in World War II I recommend watching Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni (“In this Corner of the World”), a movie about a young woman from Hiroshima who marries a sailor stationed in Kure that goes to live with his family in the area during World War II. It’s focused on her daily life in wartime and throughout the film there are many beautiful scenes that take place in pre-devastated Kure and Hiroshima. A lot of attention is also paid to small details, such as trains passing Kure forcing passengers to close their window blinds so they couldn’t see the base.

Pre-war Nakajima-honmachi in Hiroshima
Today this neighborhood is the Peace Park and the central building in this image, now the Rest House, still stands.

Kure Naval District
The building on the left is the former admin building and still stands. Sadly the train is gone. The little white guard shack, or one like it, is preserved at Irifuneyama park a few minutes walk away.

ADDRESS

Kure Maritime Museum (Yamato Museum)
5-20 Takaramachi, Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture 737-0029
0823-25-3017

JMSDF Kure Museum (Whale of Iron Museum)
5-32, Takaramachi, Kure, Hiroshima-ken 737-0029