U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka opened its gates to 150 Japanese residents on May 12 for a tour of historical sites located on base.

Highlights of the tour, co-sponsored by the City of Yokosuka, included visits to dry docks built in the late 1800s and a question and answer session with U.S. Navy Sailors.

"The fact that they're here to see something you represent makes me feel good," said Yeoman Seaman Apprentice Nick Butler, who volunteered to walk around the base with Japanese guests and answer questions about Navy life.

Fleet Activities Yokosuka was established in 1945 after World War II came to an end, but construction of the shipyard area began in 1865.

The tour - led by Yokosuka City guides - takes guests to about ten sites, including Dry Dock 1. Built in 1871, the dry dock is made of stone and still in use today. Other stops on the tour include a building once used as headquarters for the Imperial Japanese Navy, as well as memorials and monuments. One monument notes when former Japanese empresses visited the Naval Hospital, for example, while another notes the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake, which destroyed most of the buildings in the Yokosuka Naval District in 1923.

The tour, held four times a year, is very popular. Yokosuka City received 1,000 applications from all over Japan for the May 12 tour alone. The city and base gave the green light to 150 Japanese residents to tour the base in three groups of 50 people each.

Japanese locals say they are drawn to the Base Historical Tour for a variety of reasons.

Akihiko Watanabe, who toured the base with his young daughter, said his grandfather was stationed on a Japanese Navy submarine based here during World War II. Also, his great grandfather used to do shipbuilding about 100 years ago on what is now Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

"I wanted to go on a tour to see where they worked and lived," Watanabe said through a translator.

Isao Kijima and his wife Sumiko wanted a chance to see something different since they had already seen Dry Docks 1, 2, and 3 during a Base Historical Tour years ago. They also checked out the USS Independence (CV-62), an aircraft carrier forward-deployed in Yokosuka for seven years until 1998, during an open base event called Friendship Day.

This time around, the highlight for Mr. and Mrs. Kijima on May 12 was seeing the size of Dry Dock 6. At approximately 330 meters long, the dry dock -- which was completed in 1940 -- can fit an aircraft carrier inside, or as Mr. Kijima noted through a translator, "you can put the Tokyo Tower in it!"

There's more to the base than historical sites, as the U.S. Navy's Japanese friends got a chance to discover.

One of the most popular parts of the tour was "communication time" with Navy Sailors where guests asked them questions ranging from their favorite snack to why they decided to join the service.

"I like to share our culture with the Japanese," said Gas Turbine Systems Technician Mechanical 3rd Class Tabitha Ussery, a tour volunteer and who works at the base's Emergency Operations Center.

At the end of the day, the tours benefited the Sailors too. "It's nice to learn about the history (of the base)," Ussery said.


For more information, visit www.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/usnavy, or www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka, visit www.navy.mil/.