Wreck Chasing in Japan?

[John Dupre]

Does anyone know if there is any wreck chasing done in Japan? There must have been thousands of wrecks and shootdowns. Some parts of the country are pretty rural and mountainous. Read a book once about and SB2C gunner who survived a crash late in the war and remained on the run living off the country in Northern Japan for several weeks until the surrender. Often wondered what happened to the mountain top wreckage of his aircraft.

[shrike]

I know the Germans had an extensive program to recover and recycle the wreckage of aircraft. (Strangers in a Strange Land, Vol. 2: Escape to Neutrality, ISBN-13: 978-0897472784) I imagine the Japanese, having even fewer resources to start with, would have done the same until the very end of the war.

[tom d. friedman]

there are networks of caves all through japan, & it's surrounding islands formally held by the Japanese, or still in possession of their government that either have not been explored, or only explored to limited depths. they were a crafty enemy, i'm sure some goodies lay unfound in these networks to this day.

[JohnB]

When I was a kid, my father was stationed in Japan. Our housing area (Grant Heights) had several semi-buried curved hangars around it. They were locked up and used for storage, but I never saw any wrecks.

If we're taking wreckchasing in the UK sense, i.e. digging holes, there might be some stuff buried in the soft rice paddies, but with land at a premium, I'd have to think even a lot of that has been found by now.

[hurk130]

The Japanese government is not real interested in bringing the subject of WW2 up. Their history books are a bit different than ours on this subject and a lot of memories need to stay forgotten from their side of the story. Saburo Sakai spent many years trying to get Japan to admit to their war crimes but was shunned completely by many. They have some museums, some memorials but for most part, they collectively have moved forward. They do have a very high interest in buying back Samurai Swords taken from Japan by G.I.'s. I can understand that. I am positive that there are others more worthy to comment on this here at this board. I personally tried to repatriate a prayer pouch and was told to just let it be. The pouch is being donated to the Air Mobility Command Museum in Dover Delaware.