Historical Survey of Large Drainage Pumps Remaining at JMU Kure Works

Abstract

At JMU's Kure Works, an old large drainage pump rumored to be “spoils of war from the Russo-Japanese War” still exists, and was shared between Dock No. 3 and the Shipbuilding Dock, which had a large roof over it when the battleship Yamato was built. If the spoils of war from the Russo-Japanese War are still in use today, they represent an important industrial heritage for Japan's shipbuilding and machinery industries, but their detailed provenance was unknown even within the company. This study was done to unravel the history of this drainage pump by conducting research at JMU and studying drawings and literature. As a result, it was found that the performance of Units 1, 2, and 3 at the time of Dock 3 construction, and that Unit 2 has been installed without being replaced from the time of its installation to the present. It was also found that not only Unit 2 but also Unit 1 used drainage pumps that were spoils of the Russo-Japanese War when Dock 3 was constructed, that these pumps were transported from Dalian to the Kure Naval Arsenal via Maizuru Naval Arsenal, and that only Unit 3 newly purchased a new pump manufactured by Shibaura (now Toshiba).