Site of Kamegakubi Test-Firing Range

At the eastern tip of Kurahashi Island, a forest has grown over the remains of the Imperial Navy's top-secret weapons testing facility. The range was used to test the main batteries of the battleships Yamato and Musashi, whose 46-centimeter guns were the largest ever mounted on warships. Three concrete blast barriers still stand, built to contain shock waves that rattled paper doors in a village 1.5 kilometers away. Local fishermen petitioned against the range in 1924 after being banned from nearby waters, without success. A memorial was built on-site in 2006, and the facility was designated a Japan Heritage Site in 2020.