Just after the end of the World War II, Japan suffered from a ruinous famine, persisting since before the surrender. Had the surrender and Operation Downfall not occurred, their would have surely been widespread deaths by famine in the winter of 1945 in Japan. During that winter, the company that had sustained the least damage received permission from GHQ/SCAP for whaling operations in the waters near the Bonin Islands. However, since they were forbidden to to approach the very islands where the whaling bases were, a whale mother ship was needed for the processing of the caught whales. However, all of the privately-owned boats had been pressed into service by the Imperial Japanese Navy as picket boats, and had been almost totally destroyed. Having heard rumors of transport ships with slopes for rapid unloading, they asked the Ministry of Second Demobilization, the former Ministry of the Navy of Japan, to lend them a naval ship. On first line of the list of warships they received along with a favorable reply was "Battleship Nagato, 33,000 tons, 8,000 horsepower, damaged." So, in 1946, First Class Transport Ship No. 19 was reconfigured to enable a whale to be hoisted up the slope onto the deck, and a tiny whaling fleet of two wood-hulled whaling boats and five pickled whale transport boats was formed, and after a grueling process of trial and error, they brought home the tattered whale meat. After that, before they were scrapped as reparation ships, No. 16, No. 13 and No. 9 were used for whaling. (No. 16 was handed over to the Republic of China.) This was the origin of the "Whaling Battleship Nagato," a common joke among Japanese military fanboys. In actuality, these warships were not whaling ships that launched harpoons, but rather were needed as mother ships to process the whale meat, but they often confuse the two for each other.
References
Tenshou's webpage: "Wartime Standard Ships in The Antarctic Ocean: The first chapter”
I'm assuming (from the what if tag and lack of any English sources I can find) that that's some sort of fanfiction. I assume that's why it got downvoted. Wiki states that the Nagato was boarded by the Allies on my birthday in 1945 before being hauled off to her death at Bikini 7 months later, which wouldn't leave much time in between for whaling by the Japanese.
OOZ662 said: I'm assuming (from the what if tag and lack of any English sources I can find) that that's some sort of fanfiction. I assume that's why it got downvoted. Wiki states that the Nagato was boarded by the Allies on my birthday in 1945 before being hauled off to her death at Bikini 7 months later, which wouldn't leave much time in between for whaling by the Japanese.
Reread what he wrote. The whaling industry was looking for landing ships to haul dead whales in, so they sent a letter to the Japanese government asking them to lend out a naval ship. The Japanese government said it was okay, and sent along a list of ships the whaling industry could borrow. Near the top of the list was the Nagato. He never said anything about the Nagato actually being used. The whole point of the story is that the Japanese government was willing to lend out their last remaining battleship to a bunch of whalers.
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