KYODO NEWS - Jun 21, 2018 - 12:34 | All, Japan

Researchers said Wednesday they have discovered the wreck of what is believed to be Imperial Japanese Navy submarine RO-500, which survived World War II but was scuttled by U.S-led occupation forces, in Wakasa Bay near Kyoto Prefecture in western Japan.

Tamaki Ura, a professor at Kyushu Institute of Technology and member of the research team, said that judging from the distinctive characteristics of the bow it is almost certain to be the RO-500, a German U-boat that was transferred to Japan during WWII.

Video footage taken by the team's unmanned submersible showed that the submarine suffered damage to parts of its bridge, but otherwise looked upright and relatively intact. The ship's bottom sat on the seabed 88 meters below sea level.

The 76-meter-long submarine was built in Germany in 1941 and transferred to Japan as part of technology exchange between the two countries. It had been used by the Imperial Japanese Navy as a training vessel since arriving in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, in 1943, and was scuttled in Wakasa Bay in April 1946.

"I would definitely want to see it with my own eyes," said 92-year-old Shigeru Kosaka of Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, who was a gunner aboard the RO-500 for about half a year until Japan's WWII surrender in August 1945.

"I still remember torpedoes being stored under our beds," he recalled.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Dwango Co. and the Society La Plongee for Deep Sea Technology are also involved in the research team.