page_title: Japanese battleship Mutsu
section_title: Salvage operations
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese battleship Mutsu / Salvage operations
caption_attribution_description: English: 14-cm 50-caliber 3rd Year Type naval gun from battleship Mutsu
context_page_description: Mutsu was the second and last Nagato-class dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy at the end of World War I. It was named after the province. In 1923 she carried supplies for the survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake. The ship was modernized in 1934–1936 with improvements to her armour and machinery, and a rebuilt superstructure in the pagoda mast style.
  Other than participating in the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in 1942, where she did not see any significant combat, Mutsu spent most of the first year of the Pacific War in training. She returned to Japan in early 1943. That June, one of her aft magazines detonated while she was at anchor, sinking the ship with the loss of 1,121 crew and visitors. The IJN investigation into the cause of her loss concluded that it was the work of a disgruntled crew member. The navy dispersed the survivors in an attempt to conceal the sinking in the interest of morale in Japan. Much of the wreck was scrapped after the war, but some artefacts and relics are on display in Japan, and a small portion of the ship remains where it was sunk.
context_section_description: Divers were brought into the area to retrieve bodies and to assess the damage to the ship. Prior to diving on the wreck they were allowed to familiarize themselves on board Mutsu's sister ship, Nagato. The Navy leadership initially gave serious consideration to raising the wreck and rebuilding her, although these plans were dropped after the divers completed their survey of the ship on 22 July. Thus Mutsu was struck from the Navy List on 1 September. As part of the investigation, Dive-boat No. 3746, a small Nishimura-class search and rescue submarine, explored the wreck on 17 June with a crew of seven officers. While crawling on the harbour bottom, it became snagged on the wreckage and its crew nearly suffocated before they could free themselves and surface. In July 1944, the oil-starved IJN recovered 580 tonnes (570 long tons; 640 short tons) of fuel from the wreck.
  The 1.2-metre (3 ft 11 in) diameter chrysanthemum mon, symbol of the Imperial Throne, was raised in 1953 but lost or scrapped shortly thereafter. One of the 140 mm casemate guns was raised in 1963 and donated to the Yasukuni Shrine. In 1970, the Fukada Salvage Company began salvage operations that lasted until 1978 and scrapped about 75% of the ship. The two aft turrets were raised in 1970 and 1971. Despite the fact that the salvaged components were remarkably preserved, in particular the two gun turrets, bow (including chrysanthemum mount) and stern (with every propeller, and intact rudders and steering gear), the entirety of the ship was broken up to farm low-radiation steel and sold to an anonymous "research institute." The salvagers retrieved 849 bodies of crewmen lost during the explosion. In 1995, the Mutsu Memorial Museum declared that no further salvage operations were planned.
  The only significant portion of the ship that remains is a 35-metre (114 ft 10 in) long section running from the bridge structure forward to the vicinity of No. 1 turret. The highest portion of the ship is 12 metres (39 ft 4 in) below the surface.
caption: A 14-cm 3rd Year Type naval gun from Mutsu on display at the Yasukuni Museum
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