Mysterious Mine-layer

In my 08 March entry here I started to examine and explain the large stone monuments which are lined-up along the edge of Yokosuka's Verny park.

The one which was the furthest from the water's edge was, surprisingly, a non-naval memorial to the poet Masaoka Shiki  ----  But the next one to its left, is all-Navy, and looks like this:

  















It is a monument for the Japan Imperial Navy Mine-laying warship, OKINOSHIMA.

From Wikipedia:

"Okinoshima (沖島) was a large mine-layer of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which was in service during the early stages of World War II.  She was named after the Okinoshima Island in the Sea of Japan and the earlier Japanese battleship Okinoshima.  She was the largest purpose-built mine-layer of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the first Japanese mine-layer to be equipped with a reconnaissance seaplane."

The full link is here.

Here is what Okinoshima looked like:

I will continue to check on it, but it is not apparent to me why this particular ship has been memorialized in Yokosuka.  It was built elsewhere -- launched in 1935 at shipyard in Hyogo Prefecture -- and it didn't survive very long into the war, being sunk in May 1942 (by torpedoes from a USN submarine.)

The memorial was erected on 05 December 1983 by a committee which was formed to commemorate Okinoshima.  A prayer and poem are carved into the stone-face, and on the back-side is a list of the names and hometowns of the 61 crew members who were KIA.