Forty-five meters down, a diver races to record a fleeting moment of WWII history
Technical wreck diver Kingo Wakasa, 56, is going against all odds to document the rusted hull of the USS Emmons destroyer on the seabed off northern Okinawa.
At a depth of forty-five meters in the Pacific Ocean, Kingo Wakasa, a technical wreck diver from Tokyo, stands near the wreckage of the USS Emmons, a World War II American destroyer. The ship was sunk on April 6, 1945, after sustaining five kamikaze attacks off the northern coast of Okinawa. The Emmons lies among the engines and twisted metal remnants of the attacking aircraft.
For Wakasa, whose grandfather served as an officer during the war, the site holds deep personal significance. Over the course of his nearly one thousand dives, with two hundred of them focused on the Emmons alone, he continues to map newly discovered artifacts before the relentless sea erases their existence.
Written by urgent.news from Japan Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
