Okinawa WWII landing sites

[Baracuda Smile]

Here is the map placed into Google Earth with the modern cities

 

[iflylow]

That looks like the one from the official USMC history. The one from Appleman is little better for our purposes (in my opinion) as it has a more clearly defined shoreline.

 

[iflylow]

Here is the map placed into Google Earth with the modern cities

I like that! Nice job on the merging of data!!!

 

[Baracuda Smile]

I like that! Nice job on the merging of data!!!

I just wish the I could of posted the invasion chart on Google Maps so that every one could zoom in and adjust opaque. This way if you find an artifact underwater you might be able to tell which unit it belonged to.

 

[Chuck SS]

Back in the 60s the island was innudated with divers as we had thousands of military working there and on R&R, along with civilian divers, and the training capacity/organizations to match the needed effort. The Reef Rovers at Kadena alone had three and at times four of the biggest compressors available along with 12+ 300 cube Bottle Banks each to keep up with the air fills on long weekends. Looking for artifacts was always popular but here's a bit of history that you may or may not know concerning their scarcity. Following the war, salvage went into high gear with locals, our military and later many from the Phillipines heading the efforts. This continued through the late 40s and into the 50s. By the late 50s the military presence on the island was growing and so did rec diving. By the 60s it was in high gear along with shell collecting, photography, spearing, artifact hunting, etc. The sites covered by the maps were hit and have been hit time and time again trying to find treasure of one sort or another. An instructor friend of mine, the late Peete Hansen, NAUI Instructor T-2*, our families and myself, got bit by that bug in a slight way and ended up on the north side of the Motubu Peninsula, Unten Ko to be exact, and hot on the trail of the Japanese Minature Submarine Pens, artifacts, etc. It was a small town with harbor and to make a long story short we found nothing.. After a day of poking around, diving, etc - we happened upon an older man on his evening walk.

He sat down with Peete, who was skilled in multi languages including the older Ryukyuan dialect and gave him the story. He confused us at first as he spoke of the ships coming, wars, plural, etc. Turned out he was somewhere north on 100 yrs old and had been watching things come and go and folks fighting since the 1860s or so. In short once we got him into WWII mode, he sorted thinigs out quickly telling us about the bombing of those pens, the converting of Unten to a port facilitry for the US Army/Marines/Navy at the time and then the later salvaging operations carried on by primarily divers and men from the Phillipines. We looked there and several other places but never did uncover remnants of a miniture sub. We did find a few artifacts here and there however including an unexploded Torpedeo just north of White Beach, a ship mine, deep under Bolo Point, the remains of a Zero--same location and loads of ordinance in the Bishigawa River area or the shoreline as a couple ammo ships had been sunk right off there. Unfortunately several folks lost limbs and life messing with the stuff washing in still in the 60s off of Kadena Circle area and elsewhere.

Good luck on your diving and especially finding artifacts of significance.
:vintagediver:

Chuck SS

* In the beginning when the world was flat and Damsels were the size of great Whites and NAUI was just getting underway, Peete was their second crossover instructor, coming in from a cadre of LA County Instructors I believe.

 

[Chuck SS]

Forgot to add, a huge multi post thanks to Baracuda Smile on his any posts and in depth info on diving the Rock. Okinawa is a jewel in divings crown and led to the Presidents* of several of the big Diving companys coming there in the 60s to find out why/what etc concerning the boom of diving and sales on the island. This is the best of boards and his posts are always top notch!!

*(US Divers, SCUBAPro, Dacor)

 

[Katamuki]

Chuck, I have some idea that the of the 6 subs that were based in that region 4 were lost by April 1945. I also know that at least one was removed by the US Navy and taken for technology study. There is a remaining sub that I cant account for but I believe was either destroyed by aerial bombing in April 45 on the return to port or taken/destroyed by US forces in situ at the port.

There is still a great deal of material left here on the island and in the water. Three weeks ago I found an LVT that to my knowledge wasnt listed before. All that is left is the turret and smashed pieces of the hull but this leads me to believe that there is alot more out there. In the last two weeks another sunken boat was found off shore here that isnt listed in any documents I know about.

Barracuda, my wife, and I found a Type 2 Imperial mine last year which was detonated by the JSDF/Coat Guard and since then I have found two more. In addition I have found and identified a nest of anchor points offshore of a complete mine field but its deep and I didnt poke around to look for more mines.

Offshore I have found parts of the seabed littered with 20mm and 40mm shells where obviously a fire fight happened with shell casings all over the sand. Its a cool place to dive!

 

[mongodives]

There are numerous artifacts to be found on Okinawa if your not looking for ships,trucks etc. I have numerous dives there that I saw/found ammunition from small arms to artillery, boot soles, coke bottles and numerous other small items.
Maeda point and Sunabe are probably picked clean or covered in soft corals but there are tons of other places to dive that aren't in the dive books and I'm sure Barracuda and Katamuki are exploring/discovering them.

 

[Baracuda Smile]

Back in the 60s the island was innudated with divers as we had thousands of military working there and on R&R, along with civilian divers, and the training capacity/organizations to match the needed effort. The Reef Rovers at Kadena alone had three and at times four of the biggest compressors available along with 12+ 300 cube Bottle Banks each to keep up with the air fills on long weekends. Looking for artifacts was always popular but here's a bit of history that you may or may not know concerning their scarcity. Following the war, salvage went into high gear with locals, our military and later many from the Phillipines heading the efforts. This continued through the late 40s and into the 50s. By the late 50s the military presence on the island was growing and so did rec diving. By the 60s it was in high gear along with shell collecting, photography, spearing, artifact hunting, etc. The sites covered by the maps were hit and have been hit time and time again trying to find treasure of one sort or another. An instructor friend of mine, the late Peete Hansen, NAUI Instructor T-2*, our families and myself, got bit by that bug in a slight way and ended up on the north side of the Motubu Peninsula, Unten Ko to be exact, and hot on the trail of the Japanese Minature Submarine Pens, artifacts, etc. It was a small town with harbor and to make a long story short we found nothing.. After a day of poking around, diving, etc - we happened upon an older man on his evening walk.

He sat down with Peete, who was skilled in multi languages including the older Ryukyuan dialect and gave him the story. He confused us at first as he spoke of the ships coming, wars, plural, etc. Turned out he was somewhere north on 100 yrs old and had been watching things come and go and folks fighting since the 1860s or so. In short once we got him into WWII mode, he sorted thinigs out quickly telling us about the bombing of those pens, the converting of Unten to a port facilitry for the US Army/Marines/Navy at the time and then the later salvaging operations carried on by primarily divers and men from the Phillipines. We looked there and several other places but never did uncover remnants of a miniture sub. We did find a few artifacts here and there however including an unexploded Torpedeo just north of White Beach, a ship mine, deep under Bolo Point, the remains of a Zero--same location and loads of ordinance in the Bishigawa River area or the shoreline as a couple ammo ships had been sunk right off there. Unfortunately several folks lost limbs and life messing with the stuff washing in still in the 60s off of Kadena Circle area and elsewhere.

Good luck on your diving and especially finding artifacts of significance.
:vintagediver:

Chuck SS

* In the beginning when the world was flat and Damsels were the size of great Whites and NAUI was just getting underway, Peete was their second crossover instructor, coming in from a cadre of LA County Instructors I believe.

Chuck,

We are interested in the details of diving back in the 60's. Rumor has it that the Okinawan's were salvaging steel off of some wrecks and set off the magazine hold and killed numerous divers. Shortly after that the US Navy came in and drug the known wrecks to deep water. Short of this event the wreck diving in Okinawa, would be as good as Bermuda.

Where do you think the artifacts from these wrecks went? Private collections, scrap, pawn shops?

Mongodives yes we continue to explore farther and farther off shore, and we are finding even more interesting stuff. The new tool set will be using Tec Diving to go deeper, and stay longer, along with DPV's to scan more terrain in less time.

The second controversy that is often debated on Okinawa, is which dive shop came into existence first. Today we have 3 shop US Army Torii beach, US Marine Corps Tsunami Gear, and US Air Force Kadena Marina. Can you recall which Moral Welfare and Recreation (MWR) dive shop came into existence first?

 

[Chuck SS]

Okinawan and Phillipine diving/salvage accounted for most of it closer to shore. I do recall hearing about divers setting off an ammo ship, off of Kadena somewhere but that occured in the 50s. The Reef Rovers at Kadena were in existance longest as far as I know with their huge club and MWR facility. Additionally the Coral Kings at Naha AFB, had a smaller facility as did the Marines at Camp Hansen, and at Camp Foster. The granddaddy was the one at Kadena as far as I know. The Navy at Whtie Beach and the army at Naha Port, had military dive facilitys and a decomp chamber (Naha Port) and the Army had a smaller Club at Camp Kue, where the military hospital was located. At one time or another I taught either students or instructors at all of the above facilities. Additionally Peete Hansen and Tom Curry were lead instructors back then and a few others I recall are Pete Petry, Jim Johnson, Mike Gambrel, Johnny Higa, Mike Bond, John Duggan to name a few and all Reef Rovers. at one time we likely had seven or eight active instructors turning out students. The facility at Torii came along later as did the current Marine facilities. The Army and Marines during the 60s were strapped, manpower wise due to Vietnam and oft times the facilities at the Bases and Posts were not manned for periods due to deployments, etc. The first PADI Instructor Course on the Island was at Camp Hansen and also a Marine Corp Instructor Certif course as the USMC had shipped all avail instructors out to Nam and needed more. Tom Curry and myself taught that one on temp duty to the 3rd Marines. Right after that in 69 Camp Foster reopened a club and a complete dive shop and the Army also reopened the Club at Camp Kue where Mike Gameral and I taught.

In part the Kadena Reef Rovers were huge and had a lot of multi service safety responsibilities due to Army delegation of responsibilities to the Base and the Air Wing at Kadena and from them to the Reef Rovers, where club, military operational dive/recovery team and safety/cert responsibilities were all mixed in with MWR and the other branches of the service. How huge one might ask? Well at the Reef Rovers peak during the 67-69 period we were one ot the two or three largest clubs in the world if not the largest (hundreds of active members) based on active membership from all branches of the service and our retail and air facility. It's easy to see if one but realizes the build up on Okinawa at that time frame due to Vietnam.