Crouching dragons: the suicide divers Japan never sent to war
Por Julian Ryall — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Japan This Week in Asia People Crouching dragons: the suicide divers Japan never sent to war
Sealed in diving suits with mines attached to poles, Japan’s ‘fukuryu’ frogmen waited beneath the waves for an invasion that never came
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Julian Ryall Published: 9:30am, 19 Sep 2026 Japan ’s wartime kamikaze pilots remain among the most recognisable symbols of the Pacific war: young men flying aircraft into Allied ships on missions from which they were not expected to return.
Far less well-remembered are the fukuryu – suicide frogmen trained in the closing months of World War II to walk into the sea with mines on bamboo poles, then wait beneath the waves for an Allied invasion fleet.
Kanade Hamamoto was one of many Japanese people who had never heard of them, despite spending years on the same stretch of coast where they once trained.
The 25-year-old photographer knew Inamuragasaki, on the Shonan coast south of Tokyo, only as a scenic seaside spot until a friend mentioned that the remains of a military base could still be seen near the cape, in tunnels cut into the cliff face.
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