is a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

post located in the city of

Sagamihara is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 723,470, with 334,812 households, and a population density of 1,220 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Sagamihara is the third-most-populous city ...

, in

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanag ...

, Japan, about southwest of Tokyo.

Depot

Sagami General Depot is located in the city of

, Kanagawa Prefecture,

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island se ...

, Japan. Sagami Depot is home to the 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade,

Defense Commissary Agency The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), headquartered at Fort Lee (Virginia), is an agency of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) that operates nearly 240 commissaries worldwide. American military commissaries sell groceries and household ...

Central Distribution Center, Defense Logistics Agency for US forces in Japan, and Army Medical Storage.

History

Sagami General Depot currently occupies the grounds of a former Japanese Imperial Army installation which opened in 1935 as the Sixth Arsenal under Colonel Ikeda as a branch of the Tokyo First Army Arsenal. In 1936 the Imperial Army made the arsenal a separate activity and renamed it Sagami Army Arsenal. The primary function was manufacturing armaments and weapons, mostly tanks, for the Japanese Army. Sagami Depot was also the test bed for the development of the 120-ton “O-I” experimental heavy tank as well as manufacturing balloon incendiary devices which Japanese forces launched from Chiba to start fires in the west coast region of the U.S. In September 1945, Sagami was occupied by the U.S. Army 5th Cavalry Regiment. The installation played a major role in the support of U.S. forces during the Korean War. In 1957 the Army began to scale back operations at Sagami General Depot and U.S. Army Supply and Maintenance Activity (which performed maintenance and repair of heavy equipment and tanks) was inactivated after the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

. Today, the installation continues to be used as a U.S. Army logistics and supply facility continuing to honor its commitment to Japan’s defense. From 1935 to the end of World War II, this location was known as the Sagami Army Arsenal, where Mitsubishi developed and manufactured tanks for use by the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

. In September 2015, land for the former housing area was returned to Japan with a portion designated for joint use. At around 12:45 a.m., August 24, 2015, there were reported explosions at the depot in a storage building containing tanks of nitrogen, Freon, oxygen and compressed air.

References

External links

Sagami General Depot
https://www.army.mil/38ada {{coord, 35, 34, 51, N, 139, 22, 40, E, source:kolossus-jawiki, display=title Installations of the United States Army in Japan 1935 establishments in Japan