Originally published in Japan in 2005, each album in the Japanese Naval Warship photo album series contains official photographs taken by the Kure Maritime Museum, as well as those taken by private individuals. These pictorial records document the main types of Japanese vessels, from battleships to submarines, based on the best images from Shizuo Fukui, a former Imperial Japanese Navy commander and technician. These photos include the ones Fukui began collecting as a young boy and continued to do after he began work as a naval shipbuilder, and those that he was given in order to complete a photographic history of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s ships. The latter included images gathered by Nagamura Kiyoshi, a shipbuilder who proactively collected photos, and from the collection of machinist Amari Yoshiyuki. Moreover, with the help of shipbuilder Makino Shigeru, among others, Fukui was able to continue gathering photographs and other items throughout the postwar period. Thus it is not an exaggeration to say that Fukui dedicated his entire life to this work. These images are especially valuable because of the massive destruction of official documents at the end of the war.

Edited by the Kure Maritime Museum and Kazushige Todaka; Translated by Robert D. Eldridge