Battleship Musashi - Plan to refloat off Sibuyan Island

Battleship Musashi sunk by allied forces in World War II.

A Japanese group visited yesterday Sibuyan Sea off this island province as it bared a plan to refloat a big Japanese warship that was sunk in the area on Oct. 24, 1944 during a great naval battle between the allied forces and the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II.

The Japanese, group headed by Kiyoshi Goto of the Japanese government and Toshihiko Suzuki, chief executive officer of AIPAC (Asian Countries and Islands Optical Fiber Communication and Philippines Property in Asia), made yesterday an offer to the Philippine government to refloat the sunken Japanese warship in the Sibuyan Sea.

The Japanese offer calls for the conversion of the warship into a tourist attraction which could be made a symbol of friendship between the Philippines and Japan.

Goto and Suzuki, who arrived the other day in the country from Japan, said that their group would shoulder all the expenses for the refloating of the warship.

The two Japanese executives came all the way to this historic island to drop flowers and sprinkle champagne at the area in Sibuyan Sea where the warship was sunk during World War II.

The group is proposing to develop the area into a tourist destination for the benefit of the Filipinos and the Japanese, particularly the relatives of the crews of the sunken warship.

As this developed, Gen. (retired) Dominador C. Resos Jr., president of the Romblon Cultural Heritage Association Inc. (ROCHAI), is inviting foreign dignitaries, including US Ambassador Kristie Kenney and top Japanese Embassy officials, to witness and recall once again the Battle of Sibuyan Sea, which is described as "the greatest and deadliest naval battle ever recorded in the history of World War II," that took place on Oct. 24, 1944.

"Join us in our return to this tragic chapter of World War II when the blue waters of Sibuyan Sea turned blood red, caused by the mixture of blood shed by the international soldiers led by the protagonists, American and Japanese soldiers, and their respective allies," General Resos said.

Dubbed as "the world’s biggest battleship," Japan’s Musashi with 1023 of her crew sank to her watery grave in the seabed of Sibuyan Sea. One hundred or more warships and aircraft also sank and gave company to Musashi on the ocean floor.

Shortly after the furious naval battle, historians say, some 2000 bodies of soldiers floated in the Sibuyan Sea waters.

Some of the bodies drifted to coastlines and beaches, including those of Boracay Island and Carabao Island.

Resos said that old folk, fishermen, and amateur "ghostbusters" had claimed that Sibuyan Sea is full of mysteries, saying "it is haunted and enchanted.