The Truk Transportationĭepartment loaded and unloaded supplies from ships. Nearby was a sawmill and small rail cars connected most of the buildings. The facility also had a 30 ton floating crane and 2,500 ton dry dock. Sustained to ships from American submarine attacks. A thousand men worked here on ship repairs, mostly damage More warehouses and a refrigeration building, HQ, and a two story barracks were constructed. It was the main receiving area for the military. Its supply storage and fish cannery were commandeered by the IJN and it became theįourth Naval Dockyard. The South Seas Development Company (Nan’yo Kohatsu K.K) had docking facilities on the southwestern tip of Dublon Island. Many different repair and barracks existed specific to submarines. Torpedoes were stored in caves and transported by rail car to the It serviced, supplied and did minor repairs to subs. I-33 quickly sank killing 33 crewmen.ĭuring May 1942, the 85th Submarine base, was constructed on the western shore of Dublon Island. On Natsushima (Dublon) Island, but inappropriate actions by I-33’s navigator, then senior officer aboard, resulted in the submarine flooding. Later in 1942, IJN repair ship URAKAMI MARU started repairs to submarine I-33 supervised by URAKAMI MARU's Kosakubucho (Repair Officer) Cdr/Engineer Yoshitake Naoyuki. Never before had the need for oil storage and repair facilities been more urgent, and the Japanese NavyĬoncentrated its oil tankers and repair ships there while quickly trying to build such facilities on land as well. Naval vessels gathered there before making sorties into the Solomons, and returned to Truk for refueling and repair when damaged. Truk became the center of Japanese naval operations. In the summer of 1942, as the United States Navy began its offensive on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands became the main theater of fighting. In early 1942, at Truk, IJN repair ship SHOEI MARU provided repairs for light cruiser TATSUTA. Even after war began, the IJN was slow to strengthen Truk as a Naval Base. 4 Naval Construction and Repair Department and served untilġ0 November 1942. On 20 November 1941, Captain/Engineer Yoshii Joichi was appointed Director of the No. The base at Truk at first did not have substantial repair facilities. Lae and Salamaua on the NE coast of Australian New Guinea and Tulagi, an Australian seaplane base in the southern Solomon Islands. Because of the need to hold the approaches to Truk from the SE, IJN planners decided to secure Rabaul, an Australian seaplane base in the Bismarcks and taking Marshalls in the east, and Rabaul and New Britain to the south. Truk occupies a key position in the middle Pacific area, able to control Midway to the north, the To form a defensive perimeter to the east of the line of the Marianas into the area of the Gilberts, Ellice and Marshall islands. The importance of the Truk atoll in the Carolines had grown since a 1939 decision by Japan Prewar, the IJN's main concern was for the security of what was to become its main fleet anchorage in the southwest Pacific.
There was no underground oil storage, nor any repair facilities on land.
At the outbreak of the Pacific War, there was only one half of a completed airstrip on Takeshima (Bamboo Island), a small island less than 1,000 meters long. Postwar naval treaties, Japan did little to establish a naval base there. When the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) occupied Micronesia in World War I, and during the League of Nations mandated administration that followed, the IJN was well aware of Truk’s importance. The islands also provided enough room for several airstrips. It provided not just sufficient anchorageįor a whole Japanese fleet during that era, but also enough area to allow several vessels to maneuver for training. Inside the lagoon are many islands, not coral reefs, of which more than eight are more than one square mile in size. Truk Lagoon forms a rough triangle more than 30 miles on each side.
(Battleships YAMATO and MUSASHI at Truk in 1943) IJN Overseas No.4 Naval Construction and Repair Department Tokusetsu-Kosakubu
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