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Here is the map placed into Google Earth with the modern cities
I like that! Nice job on the merging of data!!!
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.