Verny Memorial Museum & Verny Park

Verny Memorial Museum & Verny Park (ヴェルニー記念館・ヴェルニー公園) is a waterfront memorial complex located directly in front of JR Yokosuka Station in Kanagawa Prefecture. The 2.6-hectare park sits on the shoreline of Yokosuka Port, offering unobstructed views across the water to the former site of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal — now occupied by U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka on the right and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Yokosuka District Headquarters on the left.

The site is named after François Léonce Verny (1837–1908), a French naval officer and engineer who was invited by the Tokugawa shogunate to construct the Yokosuka Iron Works (横須賀製鉄所) beginning in 1865. Verny's eleven-year tenure in Japan (1865–1876) produced far more than a shipyard: he established foundries, brick kilns, gunpowder factories, an aqueduct and hydraulic power system, modern Western-style buildings, and technical schools that trained 65 Japanese technicians and employed 2,500 workers. The Yokosuka Iron Works later became the Yokosuka Shipyard and ultimately the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal (横須賀海軍工廠) in 1903, growing into one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's most important shipbuilding facilities. Over the following decades it built capital warships including the battleships Yamashiro and Mutsu and the aircraft carriers Hiryū and Shōkaku.

The Yokosuka Naval Arsenal was attacked during the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942 and again by a large force of carrier aircraft on 18 July 1945. On 15 October 1945, the arsenal was officially abolished and its facilities were seized by Allied occupation forces.

The park was originally established in 1946 as Rinkai Park (臨海公園, "Waterfront Park") and underwent a major renovation, reopening in 2001 as Verny Park with French formal garden design elements. The Verny Memorial Museum, built in the style of houses in Brittany — the region of Brest, where Verny had worked at the naval arsenal before coming to Japan (he himself was born in Aubenas, in the Ardèche) — with steep roofs and stone walls, opened within the park grounds.

The museum's centerpiece exhibits are two steam hammers — a 3-ton and a 0.5-ton model — made in the Netherlands in 1865 and installed at the Yokosuka Iron Works in the final years of the Edo period. These are the oldest surviving steam hammers in Japan and have been designated as Important Cultural Properties. The museum also features a 1/10-scale working model of the 3-ton hammer, 3D graphic recreations of the ironworks during the late Edo and Meiji periods, and documentary videos about Yokosuka's modernization heritage.

Outside the museum, the park contains bronze busts of Verny and Oguri Kozukenosuke Tadamasa (小栗忠順), the Tokugawa-era finance commissioner who championed the arsenal's construction. A seaside boardwalk runs along the waterfront, and the park's French-style flower beds contain approximately 1,400 rose bushes of 130 varieties, predominantly French cultivars. Several war memorials stand within the park grounds, including monuments to the battleships Nagato and Yamashiro and the minelayer Okinoshima, the Kokui Kenshō monument (國威顕彰碑), and the Navy Monument (海軍の碑) — reflecting the intimate connection between this site and the warships built at the adjacent arsenal.

The Verny-Oguri Memorial Festival (ヴェルニー・小栗祭) has been held annually since the 1950s, commemorating the Franco-Japanese collaboration that gave birth to modern Japanese shipbuilding. The 70th memorial was held in recent years, often with participation from U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka.