Museum

As a major port on the Seto Inland Sea, Kure has a rich maritime history, with a naval and industrial heritage stretching back to the earliest days of Japan’s modernization. Celebrating this history is the Kure Maritime Museum, known colloquially as the Yamato Museum. A fascinating and engaging museum, it gives you a chance to experience the background of this important region, shining a light on key members of Kure’s famed citizenry, the local culture, and its shipbuilding and steelmaking industries, critical in forging Japan into a modern nation. Discover the Naval Port of the Far East The museum has interesting demonstrations of Kure’s past, starting with establishing the Kure Naval Base in 1889 and the Kure Naval Dockyard in 1903, the latter becoming one of the most important naval ports in the Far East. The museum itself is named after the battleship Yamato, the flagship of the Japanese Imperial Navy, which was at one time one of the heaviest and most powerfully-armed battleships ever constructed. Chief amongst the museum’s attractions is a one-tenth scale model of the battleship. Though the ship was sunk by American forces on 7 April 1945, the model has been faithfully reproduced based on original…