Japan–Korea Undersea Tunnel instance of railway tunnel
Proposal history
Early origins
A very early discussion on such a tunnel was conducted in 1917 by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff officer Kuniaki Koiso. Another early proposal for the project originated in the late 1930s, as part of the Greater East Asia Railroad. In 1938, Imperial Japan's Ministry of Communications reportedly decided on a preliminary survey of the sea bottom between Japan and Korea. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese government actively pursued the project to connect it with the Korean Peninsula and, ultimately, the rest of the Asian continent.In 1939, a Japanese Railway official, Yumoto Noboru, wrote of a trans-Eurasian railway to link Japan to its Axis partner, Germany, and proposed the construction of an undersea tunnel to connect Japan with Korea via the island of Tsushima. It was argued a combined undersea tunnel and land link would help safeguard Japanese communications and shipments to and from Europe, which would be imperiled by the Pacific War.Noboru's writing was joined in the same year by a recommendation from a Mr. Kuwabara, who would later assist in the creation of the undersea Seikan Tunnel, currently the world's longest undersea tunnel. In 1939, Kuwabara made the same recommendation of tunneling across the strait and connecting to a "Cross Asian Railway." Studies were soon conducted by the Japanese government on a possible Kampu (Shimonoseki-Busan) tunnel between the Japanese home islands and South Korea. The plan came under serious consideration starting in 1941.In September 1940, the Japanese Cabinet issued its overview "Outline of National Spatial Planning" study, which outlined its long-term goals for the development of its occupied conquests and spheres of influence in Asia, which it termed the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity." It further refined its plans with the outbreak of hostilities with the United States and was bent on increasing its geopolitical and ethnic ties with mainland Asia through a vastly-expanded rail and marine network, with special emphasis on the Korean Peninsula land bridge to connect it with its colonies. To achieve its objectives, Japan had plans that called for "a giant leap forward" in its transportation and communications infrastructures, including Shinkansen trains, so that it could integrate all of its colonial economies and ensure the transport of war materials and other necessary supplies to and from the home islands. That coincided with the planning and the development of the dangan ressha ("bullet train") system by a Japanese chief rail engineer, Shima Yasujiro, who concurred on the links between Tokyo, Korea, and China.In 1941, geological surveys were conducted on Tsushima Island, and test bores were sunk to 600 metres (2,000 ft) close to Kyūshū. By August 1942, Japan's South Manchurian Railway Company had created plans for an 8,000 km (5,000 mi) rail network, stretching from Manchukuo to Singapore. Against that backdrop, Japan took its first concrete step for a fixed link to and through Korea to connect it with its planned vast rail network in Asia, with the construction of several bridges as well as the completion of its 3.6 km (2.2 mi) Kanmon undersea railway tunnel joining the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Honshu.
Although preliminary work on rail lines, bridges, and tunnels in southern Japan was started, work on the project stopped in a few years as the nation's economy and infrastructure deteriorated because of World War II. After 1943, with increasing shortages of materials, manpower, and even transportation, Japan canceled its raumordnung (spatial plan) for its vast new Asian rail infrastructure, as it turned its full-time attention to defending its home islands from invasion. The land planning organization was discontinued in 1943, and its staff was transferred to the Japanese Home Ministry.
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