Sunday, August 27, 2023

馬門山墓地 Mamonzan Cemetery  

Mamonzan cemetery was established in 1882 (Meiji 15) by the then Ministry of the Navy as a burial site for naval servicemen who died in battle or died in the line of duty. 

Once a year, the township government sponsored a ceremony that alternated between Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies. 

The cemetery is home to 1,592 sailors who shared the same fate as the warships "Kawachi" and "Tsukuba" and are buried here. 

The cemetery was transferred from the Ministry of Finance to the city in 1951, and graves of citizens are also located there. 

A graveside service is held every May. 

Beautiful 彼岸花 "higan-bana" (cluster amaryllis) flowers can be seen around the autumnal equinox.




































Mamonzan Cemetery is located on a hill in Yokosuka City's Negishi-cho 1-chome and 2-chome.  Some of the monuments and graves in the cemetery are as follows. 
-- Monument for the martyrdom of the warship Kawachi
-- Monument for the martyrdom of the warship Tsukuba
-- Monument for the martyrdom of the warship Kanto
-- Monument for the dead of the warship Aihou in Beijing
-- Monument for the dead of the Shanghai Incident
-- Monument for the dead of the Fourth Fleet 》Monument for the dead of the war 
-- Crematoriums for the war dead of the Branch Kanto Incident and the Greater East Asia War
-- In addition, there are 279 graves of those who died in battle or died in the line of duty, totaling 1,592 graves.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Cyber Security Initiative


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A new liaison organization between the Defense Ministry and private businesses will be established as early as the end of this year, to promote public-private cooperation to develop cybersecurity talent.

The new organization will be based in Yokosuka Research Park, a research and development center in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. It will send experts specializing in cyber warfare to the Self-Defense Forces, dispatch them as instructors and offer facilities and equipment. In addition to supporting the SDF in developing cybersecurity personnel, the organization will conduct research on global cyber-attacks and technologies to respond to such attacks, among other things.

In Yokosuka, there are educational institutions such as the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Signal School, which will be reorganized into a school for systems communications and cyber education this fiscal year, and the National Defense Academy, while the city is also home to the command centers for the Maritime Self-Defense Force Self Defense Fleet and the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet.

The government plans to increase the total number of cybersecurity personnel for the Defense Ministry and the SDF to 20,000 and the organization will be established to help realize the plan. The founders of the envisaged organization include Takashi Saito, former chief of staff of the SDF’s Joint Staff, and Shigeki Suzuki, former vice minister for internal affairs and communications.

“Yokosuka is the best place to establish the new organization,” Saito said. “We would like to develop cybersecurity personnel as soon as possible in order to supply necessary human resources for the SDF.”

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