Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Battleship MUTSU's Gun Comes Home

This was the Imperial Japanese Navy Ship (IJNS) MUTSU -- a battleship, at sea:

























Built at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal from 1918-1921 .... and it later sank, in June 1943, due to a mysterious explosion inside the ship, while anchored at Hashira-jima (in the Inland Sea, south of Hiroshima) --- truly a hard-luck ship...

Great description available at Wikipedia: Story of Battleship MUTSU

In subsequent years, various parts and pieces of MUTSU were salvaged (some very large) --- for example, one 410 mm gun from its No.4 turret was put on display for many years at the Museum of Maritime Science in Shinagawa, Tokyo.

That same gun was returned to Yokosuka in September 2016 -- "returning home after 80 years" -- and is now on-display at Verny Park, near JR Yokosuka Station.



















      







Battleship MUTSU departed Yokosuka in 1936 for operations in the war against China, and then the war with America-&-Allied Forces --- never to return --- until a (big) part of it came back home in 2016...

And...  On 25 March 2017, a ceremony was held to officially open the MUTSU Main Gun monument, as well as memorializing the the 1200+ crew-members who were killed when the ship's ammunition magazine exploded, and it sank to the bottom in the Japanese Inland Sea...

  













In the above photo, the black kanji characters, written on the grey stone in the lower-right foreground, are read:  鎮魂  CHIN-KON  ----  Which means: "Repose of souls"

The calligraphy was done by Ms. Etsuko Oka.

   

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