🇯🇵雑兵ヘルどけん🟩Ingress🟩

How many Americans know that after two U.S. Navy warships were blown open by sea mines in the Persian Gulf in 1991, five hundred and eleven Japanese sailors sailed wooden boats straight into the deadliest minefield on earth to clear the way for the American fleet? In February 1991, Iraqi mines tore holes in the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton. Over one thousand mines still choked the waters off Kuwait. Western television commentators mocked Japan for only sending money during the war. Those commentators stopped laughing when Captain Taosa Ochiai and six Japanese naval vessels steamed eight thousand miles into the blazing summer heat of the Persian Gulf. Why did Japan send four tiny wooden-hulled minesweepers, Hikoshima, Yurishima, Awashima, and Sakushima, instead of steel destroyers? Because Iraq had planted Italian-made Manta bottom mines on the seafloor that detonated the instant they sensed the magnetic field or engine hum of a steel hull. Only non-magnetic hulls built of timber could float over them without blowing up. Working in 120-degree heat alongside the U.S. Navy, Japanese minesweepers took on the most dangerous shallow sectors where sunken oil tankers and deadly Manta mines waited. When sonar spotted a mine on the bottom that mechanical cables could not cut, Japanese explosive ordnance divers strapped on flippers, swam down into the murky water by hand, and placed explosive charges right next to live warheads. Across ninety-nine straight days under the desert sun, Japan's wooden boats destroyed thirty-four deadly mines without losing a single sailor. On their final day in the Gulf, U.S. Navy commanders stood at attention and saluted the sunburned Japanese crews who had cleared the sea in silence. Real allies do not boast on television. They take the deadliest sector and clear the path for their friends.