Disposition of WWII Vessels Near Okinawa in 1945

Disposition of WWII Vessels Near Okinawa in 1945 Twenty-seven ships sunk in battle off the coast of Okinawa in 1945 during WWII, of which the locations are unknown to the US Navy and the Japanese government. The purpose of this research was to use archival and historical sources to identify these ships in records and discern the approximate possible whereabouts of these vessels for the use of a US Navy reconnaissance project. This project’s ultimate goal is to repatriate these vessels to the US and study their artifacts and locations, a new venture for the Navy. With this information, the Navy Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) can better address how to handle these underwater sites and their artifacts to preserve them. Additionally, finding the locations of these ships that are the resting place of numerous U.S. sailors can bring a sense of closure to families who lost sailors during these attacks. To carry out this project I looked for mention of the vessel name and hull classification by any divers or diver shops in the Okinawa area, local newspapers, on social media, or on other platforms such as Reddit, YouTube etc. The next step was to find historical information from various archives including the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Ancestry and Fold3 online archives to supplement the lack of current locational information. Key information in these archives included information on location of shipwrecks including coordinates, crew rosters and casualty reports, and reports on the damage sustained during attacks in digitized documents such as War Diaries, Action Reports, or Deck Logs. These data can both guide surveys in those areas to find vessels; and the reports on the ship’s crew and the damage it sustained can help the Navy identify ships that are found. With this information, I created a reference report for the UN Navy to use for reconnaissance. Specifically, I created a map of the possible locations of these wrecks and cross-referenced them with a website called Global Fishing Watch which determined the amount of commercial fishing vessels that frequent areas related to possible wreck sites. This information was relevant because fishing nets can sometimes accidentally disturb or dislodge items from wreck sites, or there may be a higher concentration of fish in these areas, which would increase the amount of commercial fishing vessels that frequent there. Once these areas are identified, they require further investigation to determine if one of these twenty-seven ships are located there. Once these ships are located and identified underwater archaeologists can discern what materials and artifacts need to be removed for preservation and analysis and how to best protect underwater sites from factors such as commercial fishing, recreational diving, tourism, and pollution