Maizuru

舞鶴 · Eight Meiji-era brick warehouses on a deep-water harbor with a Siberian-internment memorial

Maizuru is a deep-water naval port on the Sea of Japan that the Imperial Navy opened as its fourth major base in 1901. Twelve brick warehouses were raised along the Higashi-Maizuru waterfront between 1901 and 1921 — eight survive today, all designated Important Cultural Properties, and five are open to the public as Maizuru Red Brick Park. Inside the warehouses are a café, exhibition space, and event halls; the buildings themselves are the attraction, single-stack rows of British-bonded brick the length of a football field. On the hill above the port, the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum tells the story of the 664,531 Japanese — most of them Siberian internees — who came home through this harbor between 1945 and 1958. The collection of letters, drawings, and memorial objects is registered with UNESCO's Memory of the World programme. Down the coast, Yoshihara — sometimes called the Venice of Japan — is a fishing canal-town where boats moor at the back doors of the houses. Reachable from Kyoto in about 2 hours via the JR Maizuru Line through Ayabe.

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Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum

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The Maizuru Repatriation Museum is a facility dedicated to peace, and commemorates the experiences of those interned in labor camps following the Japanese defeat in World War II.