Looking up at the sky, I imagined what it was like standing here and watching more than 100 heavy bombers fly overhead. Tajimadake, a high hill with the city of Sasebo spread out before it, housed a battery of anti-aircraft guns in pits like the one I stood in. Recessed in the ground, but otherwise unprotected from death from above.

The post-midnight hour of June 29, 1945 was heavily clouded, leaving the marauders invisible save for the drone of hundreds of engines overhead. The air raid had caught them off guard; the early warning radar somehow didn’t pick up on 145 B-29 bombers heading right for it. The battery in this pit and the others nearby thundered futilely, blasting into the sky at unseen targets. They had a fire control radar with them, but they may as well have been firing blind.

The guns and radar weren’t even a worthy target for the Americans who ignored them entirely to focus on dropping all 1,077.1 tons of firebombs into Sasebo. The gunners up here likely couldn’t see the fires as they popped throughout the city, pinpricks of fire that swiftly combined and spread until it had consumed half of Sasebo, but they probably saw the rising smoke and smelled the acrid air.

Anyway, this sounds like a great place for a picnic, doesn’t it?

Tajimadake, today known as Yumiharidake (Mt. Yumihari) is a popular tourist hotspot where people come to the observation point for a commanding view of Sasebo, its navy base and shipyard. Crowds come and take selfies and group photos, get back on their tour buses and go. Most never bother to cross the parking lot or follow the clean, paved path to Yumiharidake’s summit. The guns and radar are gone now, but their pits remain, surrounded by a clean park with picnic tables and manicured grass.

The gun pits themselves are preserved as they are; concrete shells of what they once were and inviting visitors to come and walk around. Wander a few steps into the forest and investigate a roofless ammunition magazine where rounds for the guns were stored and walk around a bunker submerged into the hillside. All in all, it’s my kind of place to enjoy a meal with the woman who can put up with my brand of eccentricity in a tranquil spot that seems more frequented by health-conscious elderly out for a stroll and photographers out to see the war relics.

The Imperial Japanese Navy made Sasebo and before 1945 much of Sasebo was Navy. The main base once spread from the harbor, where Commander, U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo is today, all the way to Kaigunbashi (Navy Bridge, now Sasebo Bridge) over the Sasebo River. Navy facilities also dotted the town itself. From Yumiharidake’s selfie-tastic view you could see all of it, and for that reason it became property of the Imperial Japanese Navy, off-limits to all civilians. That high vantage point was also an ideal location to guard the city below and so in 1938 the first two anti-aircraft guns, archaic Type 3 8-cm guns first used in the Great War, were installed in the No. 1 and No. 2 pits which visitors can still walk around today. To find targets it originally relied solely on an acoustic locator, which looks like a quad-mounted set of tubas that listened for incoming aircraft like a giant hearing aid for guns.

In time another gun battery would be added and in 1942 the first early warning radar was installed. Japanese radars were ineffective and the best Japan built in 1945 was comparable to what America had when Japanese aircraft struck Pearl Harbor.

After the first Sasebo air raid in July 1944 the old guns were replaced with Type 98 dual-mounted 10 cm, turreted batteries initially intended for warships, but late in the war their production was funneled to shore installations such as this one.

The radar mounted in the shallow amphitheatre near the pits was American in origin. It was a Mark 4 Model 1 fire-control radar, which was just a copy of the U.S. SCR-268 captured on Corregidor, Philippines in 1942.

What really makes visiting this place enjoyable is its strange combination of accessibility and lack of limits. In the U.S. most ruins located in places where small children can hurt themselves fence in the cool stuff and post signs telling you not to enter the 80 year old building that hasn’t been maintained in 72 years. Here I could go anywhere. It really feels like getting to explore some forgotten abandoned place, even though you’re a stone’s throw from a safe path at all times.

Be forewarned, the forest is obnoxiously full of big black and yellow spiders. I had to constantly be cautious to keep from getting a face full of web and web-spinner. But hey, it adds to that Indiana Jones feeling, right? Just have your treacherous guide dust them off you.

There’s more up on Yumiharidake than just this cluster of ruins, follow the road further into the woods toward the bunker noted on the top of the entrance map and keep your eyes scanning low to the ground. Partway between the beginning of the road and the parking area for the hilltop bunker there are a pair of small, low stone markers, one on either side of the road. These are boundary markers for the Navy Guard station property. They’re not on the official map, but are still kind of neat if you’re into that kind of thing. (This is Japan, so I’m sure there’s a sub-set of otaku dedicated to it.)

The last bunker to visit is, after parking, up a nice steep inclined hill. Like the other bunker sticking out of the battery hill’s backside, the entrance is cemented over to prevent entry. This particular bunker was the command bunker. For a laugh, head up the stairs to get on top of the bunker. What was once a viewport or ventilation poking from the top of it is now a picnic table.

Since you’re up on the mountain and probably pumped from seeing the remains of an air defense battery, there’s one more area to visit before getting lost on the winding path back down to Sasebo. (Yes, you will get lost on the way down. It’s just how life and that narrow, twisting, branching road works.) On the other side of Yumiharidake is Udogoe, which has a few bits of rare history of its own.

Atop Udogoe is a grey obelisk that looks out to sea. This obelisk, the Submarine No. 43 Memorial, is a solemn reminder of the dangers of the seas service, even in peace time.

On Mar. 19, 1924 Submarine No. 43 was engaged in naval exercises just off the coast of Sasebo when she was struck by light cruiser Tatsuta. The cruiser cut through her conning tower, letting in seawater and the submarine dropped to the sea floor, intact but crippled and flooding. Initially radio contacted was maintained between the submarine and the rest of the navy, just 46 meters away and entirely unable to help them. After ten hours No. 43 stopped responding to radio. All 45 crew aboard drowned.

She was raised 24 days later and brought to the Sasebo naval yard. She was restored and as the renamed Ro-25 continued her naval service until 1936. From her memorial you can see the area where she sank.

Head down a forested path just to the side of the stairs at the monument’s base and you’ll uncover another lesser-known bit of cancelled Sasebo history. About five minutes from the memorial is what looks like an abandoned smoke pit. Crown Prince Hirohito, the future Showa Emperor who would rein from 1926 until his death in 1989, visited Sasebo in 1920 and this observation platform was built so that he could have a view fit for an emperor of Sasebo’s famous Kujukushima, or 99 Islands. (These are the islands seen at the beginning of The Last Samurai.) Unfortunately, it was rainy during his visit and the road was too muddy to access the platform so the trip to Udogoe was called off and he never used his special platform.

Today the imperial platform’s view is only of the sea of trees that have shot up around it, but it’s a short walk from the current observation platform by the Submarine No. 43 Memorial which may not be fit for a Crown Prince, but at least you can see the 99 Islands from it and that’s not a bad view to end your trip on, especially at sunset.

Trying to give directions to the Udogoe submarine memorial would be confusing, to visit please enter the address below into Google Maps or your preferred map service; it will take you right to it.

Address:
Yumiharidake Observatory (Tajimadake Naval Guard station)

弓張岳展望台
Onocho, Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture 858-0965

Udogoe Viewing Platform (Submarine No. 43 Memorial)
鵜渡越展望台
858-0921 Nagasaki-ken, Sasebo-shi, Nagasakacho 490-3