Diving on the wrecks

[Von Tonner]

A very interesting site written by Alithea Nunes who has dived on some of the Japanese wrecks from WWII. in the Chuuk region. While we play this game for fun reading her descriptions of these wrecks reminds of how brutal war is.

Example extract:
Fujikawa Maru - November 8, 2005
Maximum Depth 90 feet
Total Bottom Time 95 minutes

I am overwhelmed by this dive and barely know where to start. The Fujikawa Maru is a large six hold freighter resting on even keel in 110'. She is 435' long and 58.5' wide. Her forward mast starts at 15' and guides you down to the forward hold, which we passed over to make our way to the bridge. We swam through the starboard shelter deck passageway and to our right we passed a head containing three urinals and a tiled Japanese bath with an upper and lower tub - it was beautiful. We then made our way down a set of stairs to the engine room on our left where we spent some time exploring its size in awe. We then swam through some surrounding rooms passing bits of machinery, bottles and lanterns. Then swam though hold 3, which contained a pile of broken (or perhaps exploded) barrels. I have no idea what would have been in these. We also saw a pile of tiny clear bottles which appeared to have some sort of white powder in them. These seem to be a great mystery as even our dive guide Bettewen doesn't know what they are. We then made our way to hold 2 where several fighter aircraft are broken up inside. The odd assortment of cockpits, fuselage parts, wings, tail assemblies and propeller blades make up various types of Japanese aircraft, but the one most noted is the Mitsubishi A6M Risen, otherwise known as the Zero Fighter. There are many aircraft in the hold so identifying the others is near impossible. As we exited hold 2, I noticed a torpedo lying on the portside catwalk; I am unsure if this is still live but the thought was enough to make me stay at arm's length. Next was hold 1 containing several drums, spare propellers blades, aircraft wings, gas masks, heavy machine guns, shoes, tires, ammunition shells, porcelain insulators and more fuselage parts. It was clearer in here then hold 2; Captain Lance believes an accidental dropping of a bomb intended for fishing has disturbed the tanks carrying torpedo propellant and really mucked up the viz. The other holds had been like entering the holds on the GB Church on a bad day. The machine guns had a huge impact on me - as is my nature, I wondered how many people these guns had killed and if the young Japanese boys who probably operated them were also killed... War!!!

http://www.benthic.ca/report.cfm?report=66