JAJ34: Nadachi Naval Mine accident

It’s podcasting time! This is Just Another Jerk, Dispatches from Japan. As always, I am your host Jonathan Isaacson. Remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever it is you get your pods. While you’re at it, please rate the show and if you’ve got a minute, give it a review.

So today, I’m coming at you with a short episode, but it fits into the Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Japanese History series. Which, incidentally, I have made a playlist over on Spotify for, so if you want to binge on some Japanese history - a lot of it depressing, sorry - check out the playlist. I’ll try to put the link in the show notes. Or you can find it on the homepage! Yes. I’ve finally gotten around to setting up a homepage for the show. You can access it by going to tinyurl.com/jerkpod. It’s still a work in progress, but I’ll work on it as I have time.

So, yeah, today’s Dispatch from Japan short is another sad story from history. Yes, it involves dead kids. So, it doesn’t get too graphic, but, yeah, an explosive device kills a bunch of kids, so if you don’t want to hear about that, don’t listen to this episode. But it’s a story worth telling, so let’s go.

The year is 1949. It’s March 30th. The kids in Nadachi, a town on the Japan Sea coast of Niigata prefecture are on spring break. In case you were unaware, the Japanese academic calendar, like everything else, runs from April until the following March. So Spring break in Japan is also the break between academic years.

Nadachi was a small town pretty near the Niigata - Toyama border, if you know your Japanese geography. Today, Nadachi is part of Joetsu City. But in 1949, it was still its own municipality. And, being a rural area along the sea of Japan, it had both farms and a small fishing port.

Just a real quick note about Japanese cities and towns. Especially in hilly rural areas, which Nadachi very much was and still is, towns are often characterized by 集落, a Japanese word that often is translated as settlement or village. It’s essentially a word for a cluster of homes and the associated businesses. Some rural municipalities are a half dozen or more of the 集落 scattered over a fairly wide area. And Nadachi was very much this sort of town. Looking at a map, you can see clusters of houses scattered across the areas, starting from the coast and following the Nadachi River inland. So, that’s what I mean when I say village. It’s not the other Japanese word for village, which is a political entity - with a mayor and all that. Anyway. I digress. I always digress. On with the story.

March 30 was a calm, clear day, with little wind and few waves. The adults went to work fishing and tending the farms, as was normal. Being spring break, the kids of the village were free from their normal studies and were running around the shore, playing in the rocks as kids are wont to do.

Most of the day passed as uneventfully as any spring break day for a bunch of kids can.

At around 4pm, one of the fishermen was heading out of the port - yes, some of the fishing in that area happens in the evening or even in the middle of the night. So this fisherman was heading out to sea, and he noticed something that looked a bit like an oil drum floating in the water about 300 meters from shore. It was a very dark red color. But he didn’t think too much of it. Besides, he was on his way to work. He didn’t have time to go back and investigate.

The drum continued floating towards land. And people in the village noticed it. Suspicions were raised that it could possibly be a naval mine. After all, it was only 4 years after the end of the war, and there had been several mining operations in the waters around Japan. The biggest was a US army operation called Operation Starvation. The idea was to mine Japan’s main sea routes and the areas around major ports to disrupt shipping, thus starving Japan of needed supplies, forcing surrender. And a lot of the mines had been dropped, with parachutes, from airplanes. And these naval mines were very drum-like. So, it was entirely a plausible conclusion for the locals to draw. There were some handholds and other elements of the dark red drum that made most of the people with any knowledge worried - and rightfully so - that the object was an explosive mine. And that exploding device was approaching a small rock outcropping known as Futatsuiwa.

The local police officer was dispatched to the scene, as was the local fire brigade. A local who was a veteran was also called, and it was confirmed that the object was, without a doubt, a mine, and that it would need to be towed - very carefully - away from shore. By this point, a lot of the local kids had assembled to watch the goings ons. The captain of the fire brigade asked a woman who lived nearby and was also watching the commotion if she could get a rope for them to tow the mine away from shore.

She returned to her house, about 20 meters from the shore to get a rope. I’d guess, living that close to the shore, her husband was probably a fisherman, and they probably had ropes around the house. Just a guess. It’s also highly likely that the fire captain knew her - this is a rural area. So everyone probably knew each other.

So, the woman went to get the rope. As she got to her house, she turned around to have a look at the scene before heading inside to find a rope. She saw the police captain staring at the mine before he took off his coat and rolled up his pant legs. She then headed into her house, and then she heard a huge explosion. The awning of her house collapsed, briefly trapping the woman. She was able to get out on her own, and quickly headed back to the shore, where the kids, including her two boys, had been watching the operations.

A quick warning - the next bit is the saddest, most graphic bit - if you’d prefer to skip ahead 15 seconds or so, I understand.

The woman found her 11 year old son, but when she got close, she saw that half of his head had been blown off. Down, below the seawall, she found her 14 year old son, still warm, and still standing where he had been watching. The explosion had frozen him in place. The mother held him and massaged him, hoping against hope that he could be revived, but of course, he too was gone.

In all 63 people were killed in the explosion. 59 of those were kids. Due to the short time frame between the police officer arriving and the explosion as well as due to the lack of people to shoo the kids away, no one was able to get the kids back to a safe distance.

Beyond the human toll, 44 houses sustained heavy damage, and another 59 sustained some level of damage. A temple - Souryuuji if you want to look it up on Google Maps, some 300 meters away had shrapnel from the explosive land on the grounds.

The next day, the dead were cremated together at the shore. The coffins were brought by the families and lined up. Candles and incense sticks were placed by each coffin, before the pyre was lit. It went on until the evening.

As to the nature of the mine itself, the country of origin was never determined. Obviously, the mine itself was gone. But so was the police officer who had done the most thorough investigation of the device, one of the 4 adults to die in the explosion.

The most likely country of origin is the US. As I noted early, the US Army’s Operation Starvation mined the areas around major ports, and nearby Niigata City’s port was one of the ports targeted, as Niigata was, and still is, a major industrial city on the Sea of Japan coast. It’s probably the largest industrial city on the Japan sea side of the country, in fact. It was on the lists for potential targets for the H-bombs. So, yeah, a US mine, connected to Operation Starvation certainly seems to me, and seemed to the people at the time, as being very likely points of origin for the mine at Nadachi.

But that is not to say definitively that it was a US mine. There is also the possibility that it was a Japanese made mine, used defensively. Japan, in the immediate postwar era, was financially strapped, so a proper minesweeping operation was difficult at best. So that remains a possibility. There is also some suggestion that it could have been a Soviet mine. Apparently, around the same time, there was a bit of a spate of old Soviet mines surfacing. So there are three possible culprits in this case.

And that’s the story of the Nadachi Naval Mine incident. I am left with two thoughts. One is that if only there had been another adult or two to herd the kids away from the shore, they wouldn’t have suffered the fate they did. Of course, the police officer and the other three adults - I’m guessing the fire brigade? - would have still lost their lives, and that would have been crappy. But at least they would have died in the line of duty, protecting their fellow villagers. There’s something at least noble about that, if you buy into that kind of thinking. But the kids? Man, that’s tough.

The second take away I have from this is that mines - landmines, naval mines - they suck. A lot. I mean, sure Operation Starvation was incredibly effective, so much so that studies done after the war suggested that had it started earlier, the Pacific war would have ended much, MUCH sooner, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki might not have been necessary - though there is debate as to whether they were necessary even as it was, but that’s not today’s story. Operation Starvation is our story. So, yeah, it might have helped end the war sooner, but look at those 59 kids in Nadachi. They were the collateral damage of that type of warfare. Boo. I guess I’m saying that war sucks, guys. I’m not naive. I know sometimes, it’s all that’s left when faced with certain realities. But, man. Doesn’t change the fact that war sucks.

If you want to visit the site of the Nadachi Naval Mine incident, there is a small shrine with Jizo-sama, the protector of the souls of children who died in Japanese Buddhism, at the Nadachi fishing port, in rural Niigata. It’s right along national highway 8, if you’re interested. And you gotta have a car if you want to visit. But it’s there.

And that’s where we’ll end it today.

Please remember to subscribe, rate and review the podcast wherever it is you cast your pods. This podcast is on most of the major platforms - Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora - probably some others. If it’s not on your favorite platform, let me know and I’ll look into getting it on that platform as well. You can find the twitter for this podcast @justanothercast. You can email the show at justanotherjerkpodcast@gmail.com. And you can find all that information and more on the new website- tinyurl.com/jerkpod. That’s all for me. I’m Jonathan Isaacson, and I’m out. Peace.