Though I published a story on the Katashima Torpedo Testing Facility last summer, I actually visited the site nearly a year before but due to work and other factors concerning interviews and research for the Homefront series its completion and release was pushed back quite a bit.

In the time since I last visited Kawatana has undertaken efforts to clean up the ruins without damaging them or impeding access. I noticed some of these improvements when I visited during the Taketoro Matsuri in 2016, but it was dark so I didn’t realize how much they’d clean up the area. The tall grass and growth within the standing building has all been cut down, allowing visitors to see the footprints of other long gone structures.

I visited again after also taking in a lecture by a local school teacher and historian who’d studied Katashima. Though I don’t know much Japanese I had a friend struggle to translate some of the lecture for me and I learned a lot, including information on what these low walls and cement pads were originally for.

I’ve also learned more about the facility’s history which wasn’t available to me before thanks to both the lecture and some information from my wife’s grandmother, who worked at the Kawatana Naval Factory that built many of the torpedoes tested here.

Prior to the construction of the Katashima facility, the Imperial Japanese Navy built torpedoes in Sasebo at Maebata. Maebata, today an active U.S. Navy ordnance magazine, is located on Sasebo Bay, a heavily trafficked waterway for both military and civilian use. This made torpedo testing difficult as they needed space to work. Because of this they decided to move production and testing to a new site at Kawatana Town in 1917.

Kawatana is on Omura Bay, a much larger and broader body of water that Sasebo Bay and located in a far less populated area with less waterborne traffic.

The Katashima Hashashikenjo (Torpedo Testing Facility) began operations in 1918 and also had its own co-located torpedo factory. The torpedoes were test fired from a special pier and arced around the Osaki Peninsula, aimed at Futagajima, now renamed Hatadajima. Atop Katashima’s hill is an observation platform that was erected during the initial 1917-18 construction, though in 1942 a sonar equipped facility would be built over the water past the end of the peninsula to assist in monitoring the tests.

The observation platform, built in 1917-18.

The sonar-equipped building which torpedoes were test fired past.

Katashima experienced a burst of construction and modernization in 1938-39. The surviving large structure was modified during this time. The base building, with its stone-like exterior, was built in 1917 as a machine shop. A second deck made of more conventional bricks was added and it was split between a torpedo adjustment shop in the front and an air compressor in the rear.

Note the two-style construction- the bottom is the original from 1917-18 and the upper addition from 1938-39.

Inside the torpedo adjustment shop, note the many floor mounts for now missing equipment.

In 1942 there was more construction, most notably Torpedo Factory No. 2 behind the adjustment shop and air compressor. With the increase in production and work came more workers and the facilities to house them. None of these buildings remain, but with the removed growth what was Torpedo Factory No. 1 can be seen and I could walk around the living quarters and kitchen ruins. During the war 80% of the workforce was school girls.

Part of the revealed barracks.

During the lecture I was told that six kinds of torpedo where manufactured here, including both the Type 91 aerial torpedo and the famous Type 93 oxygen torpedo. The factory is rather small, especially compared to the main Kawatana Naval Factory, which built Type 91 torpedoes, so I’m not sure if it built a limited number of torpedoes for testing or modification purposes or if it was a normal production facility.

Remains of Torpedo Factory No. 1. Beyond are the remains of the barracks.

In my last story I’d mentioned that Capt. Tameichi Hara, commandant of the Kawatana Torpedo Boat School, had said the small torpedo testing facility had not been used for many years when he arrived in late 1944. This statement is wrong. Maybe there was a translation issue from the original Japanese. The facility was not out of use, as I’ve shown, it was actively expanding to the point they kicked a shrine off the peninsula in 1930.

According to Sui Iseki, seeing the factory-fresh torpedoes off to be loaded on barges for Katashima was a big event for the factory workers.

“We used danbebune, wide flat-bottom barges, to move new torpedoes from the factory to Katashima Hashashikenjo (Katashima Torpedo Testing Facility). Lots of workers would go see the torpedoes off; when they arrived at Katashima we had a feeling that was an amalgamation of hope and fear. We prayed our torpedoes would pass their test. A female student from Kagoshima said the qualification made her feel like crying.”

Firing location

There’s not much more to say so I’ll leave you with a few more shots of the cleaned up ruin. I am very happy they didn’t add hand rails or any such thing to make it safer. There’s now a clean patch leading past the site and inside the adjustment shop there’s a metal grating over a gutter/drainage ditch that runs through the room

Air Compressor Shop

Air Compressor Shop

I’ve no idea what was right here.

The water tank was here and to our left is Oil Shed No. 1, No. 2 was put in front of it but that building has been reduced to a grown-over pad.

Here’s the original story, which I will adjust in time.