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Japanese Navy
ships visit Midway in
commemoration

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Nearly 600 sailors from the Japanese Navy will spend four days here next week before traveling to Midway Atoll, where they will spend a day commemorating the historic Pacific World War II battle that took place there more than a half century ago.

The Japan Marine Self Defense Force naval training vessels Kashima and Yugiri will steam into Pearl Harbor on Aug. 21 and be honored pierside with a public ceremony.

The two vessels will leave here Aug. 25 for their last port call at Midway Atoll, located 1,250 miles northwest of Hawaii.

There, American and Japanese survivors of the most decisive engagement of World War II will be honored during a brief ceremony on Aug. 29, said Ron Anglin, manager of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operation on Midway.

After the Navy turned the atoll over to the Department of the Interior in 1996, it became one of 500 wildlife refuges in the country.

About 400 Japanese sailors have volunteered to help clean up the beaches of Sand Island, the largest and inhabited island in the atoll which is only about three miles square.

Sand Island now accommodates a commercial airfield, fuel farm, harbor, and housing and recreational facilities.

Anglin said the two Japanese vessels will be at Midway for only a day, leaving for Tokyo in the late afternoon.

On June 4, 1942, four Japanese carriers launched a strike against Midway with hopes of destroying the U.S. carrier fleet. But Navy code-breakers had tipped the Navy to the pending invasion and destroyed the Japanese ships.

Four Japanese carriers -- Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu -- were sunk. The U.S. Navy lost the carrier USS Yorktown and two other warships. Japan lost 3,500 sailors and pilots, while 307 Americans were killed.