Muschu Island
Naval Guns

Two guns are built into the deep jungle at the highest point on the island. Both are in well made revetments, that even have the ammunition cases for shells built into the walls of the revetment for safe storage and easy access.

Tetsuo Watanabe writes about these exact guns in:
"The Naval Land Unit that Vanished in the Jungle"
(Page 63) "...enemy ships mostly torpedo boats appeared just on ten o'clock every morning. For the first few days we exchanged bombardment with them but we never damaged each other. For our guns aiming devices were damaged and from then shelling was done by eye. To hit a dot on the sea with those guns was nearly impossible. Then, the enemy boat would anchor off the beach within shelling range. The enemy sailors would roam the deck in shorts and even go fishing, as if they were saying 'lets stop this unnecessary shelling'. We knew we could not hit them just by aiming by eye. Besides, although our gun platforms were concrete the were so soft that they used to jump when the guns fired, to the extent that the recoil sent the gunners flying. Naturally the gunners started just watching the enemy sailors rationalizing that they were saving shells."

"Seeing the enemy's landing boats running audaciously, I incited Commander Otomo of an artillery unit to fire our 12-centimeter guns, but got the blunt reply, 'If we fire one shell, the enemy would discover our location and return a thousand shells. So we cannot fire. His guns were still not fired at the end of the war. The guns may still remain intact in the jungle."

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