Kure Naval Arsenal

The Kure Naval Arsenal was one of the four principal naval arsenals of the Imperial Japanese Navy. It grew out of the shipbuilding department opened with the Kure Naval District in 1889 and a later ordnance works, which were merged as the Kure Naval Arsenal in 1903 under the Naval Arsenal Ordinance. Kure lies deep in the Seto Inland Sea and was easy to defend; the Navy concentrated investment there, so that the arsenal could not only build ships but make heavy guns, turrets and armour plate, the only state works in Japan with full capital-ship capability. Japanese sources state that its workforce exceeded that of the Yokosuka, Sasebo and Maizuru arsenals combined and rank it with Krupp as one of the world's two largest armament works.

It was responsible for the construction and maintenance of major warships: the battleships Fusō and Nagato, the carriers Akagi and Sōryū, the heavy cruisers Nachi, Atago and Mogami, and the large submarine I-400. Best known is the super-battleship Yamato, laid down in the building dock in November 1937, built under strict secrecy and completed on December 16, 1941. A branch works opened at nearby Hiro in 1921 and became the independent Hiro Naval Arsenal in 1923, later a centre for naval aircraft and engines. At its peak, including mobilised students and conscripted workers, Kure employed over 100,000 workers and was the largest industrial facility in the Kure area.

As the Combined Fleet's main base and ordnance centre, Kure was attacked repeatedly in 1945. U.S. carrier aircraft first raided the port on March 19; B-29s bombed the Hiro arsenal on May 5 and the ordnance section of the Kure arsenal on June 22, when Japanese sources record about 1,900 arsenal personnel killed; the city was firebombed on the night of July 1–2; and carrier strikes on July 24 and 28 sank or wrecked the remaining ships moored around Kure, including the battleships Ise, Hyūga and Haruna.

The arsenal was abolished in October 1945 after the surrender; its facilities came under Allied control and were used to scrap surviving warships. The docks were later operated by Harima Shipbuilding and the American firm NBC, where postwar Japan's block-construction methods developed, then by Kure Shipbuilding and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries; today they are the Kure Works of Japan Marine United. The dock in which Yamato was built has been filled in, though its great roof survives. The Kure Maritime Museum (Yamato Museum), opened in 2005, presents the arsenal's technology and the history of the war.