was one of four principal naval

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...

s owned and operated by the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

History

The

Kure Naval District was the second of four main administrative districts of the pre-war Imperial Japanese Navy. Its territory included the Inland Sea of Japan and the Pacific coasts of southern Honshū from Wakayama to Yamaguchi prefectures, eastern and northern K ...

was established at Kure, Hiroshima in 1889, as the second of the naval districts responsible for the defense of the

Japanese home islands The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, ''Nihon rettō'') is a group of 6,852 islands that form the country of Japan, as well as the Russian island of Sakhalin. It extends over from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East Chi ...

. Along with the establishment of the navy base, a ship repair facility was also constructed, initially by moving the equipment from the Onohama shipyards near

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

. Construction was supervised by the French engineer

Louis-Émile Bertin Louis-Émile Bertin (23 March 1840 – 22 October 1924) was a French naval engineer, one of the foremost of his time, and a proponent of the " Jeune École" philosophy of using light, but powerfully armed warships instead of large battleships. ...

. The first warship constructed at Kure, '' Miyako'', was launched in 1897. The "Kure Shipyards" were officially renamed the "Kure Naval Arsenal" in 1903. Kure developed into one of the largest shipbuilding facilities in the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...

, capable of working with the largest vessels. The Arsenal included a major

steel works A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finis ...

(built with British assistance), and also facilities for producing

naval artillery Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for naval gunfire support, shore bombardment and anti-aircraft roles. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firi ...

and projectiles. The

battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

s ''

Yamato was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan. Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan. Japanese his ...

'' and '' Nagato'' were designed and constructed at Kure. The facilities of the Kure Naval Arsenal were repeatedly bombed by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

during the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...

, and over 70% of its buildings and equipment was destroyed. After the

surrender of Japan The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, bringing the war's hostilities to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy ...

in 1945, the Kure Naval Arsenal was turned over to civilian hands.

Current facilities

The extensive dry dock, ship building, repair and engineering facilities are now owned and operated by

Japan Marine United (informally JMU) is a Japanese ship building marine engineering and service company headquartered in Yokohama, Japan. It's Japan’s second largest shipbuilder after Imabari Shipbuilding, with shipyard facilities in Kure, Hiroshima, Yokohama, ...

, one of Japan's largest merchant marine and naval shipbuilders.

Examples of ships built at Kure Naval Arsenal

Battleships

* ''Yamato'',

Yamato-class battleship The were two battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), and , laid down leading up to World War II and completed as designed. A third hull laid down in 1940 was converted to an aircraft carrier, , during construction. Displacing n ...

1941 * ''Nagato'',

Nagato-class battleship The were a pair of dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) towards the end of World War I, although they were not completed until after the war. The last of Japan's pre-Treaty capital ships, they were the first clas ...

1920 * ''Settsu'',

Kawachi-class battleship The was a two-ship class of dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the first decade of the 20th century. Both ships bombarded German fortifications at Tsingtao during the Battle of Tsingtao in 1914, but saw no o ...

1912

Battlecruiser/Armoured Cruiser

* ''Akagi'',

Amagi-class battlecruiser The was a series of four battlecruisers planned for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) as part of the Eight-eight fleet in the early 1920s. The ships were to be named ''Amagi'', , ''Atago'', and ''Takao''. The ''Amagi'' design was essentially a l ...

/ Akagi-class aircraft carrier 1925 * ''Ibuki'', Ibuki-class battlecruiser 1909 * ''Tsukuba'', Tsukuba-class battlecruiser 1907