is the second-largest city in Nagasaki Prefecture
, with a population of 245,000. It is located in northwest Kyushu
on Sasebo Bay, an inlet
of the Amakusa Sea
, which in turn is part of the East China Sea
: Sasebo is one of the closest cities in Japan to Korea
Up to the Meiji era of Japanese history, Sasebo was a rather unremarkable fishing village. Then, in 1883, Commander Togo Heihachiro nominated Sasebo to be the home base for the main fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Over the next twenty years, Sasebo built up a major shipbuilding and munitions manufacturing infrastructure to construct and supply this fleet. In 1904, the Sasebo fleet, under the command of Admiral Togo, won its first major victory in the Battle of Tsushima, one of the key battles of the Russo-Japanese War.
During World War II, Sasebo was the home base of over 60,000 military personnel. After Japan's surrender in 1945, the United States Navy took over Sasebo, establishing a base there in 1946. Their first major operations out of Sasebo were during the Korean War, when Sasebo was the major jumping off point for United Nations personnel and materiel shipments to South Korea. While American manpower at Sasebo surged to 60,000 during the war, it died down afterward, and today there are only around 6,000 naval personnel stationed there.
Sasebo is the secondary port for the Seventh Fleet, based at Yokosuka, and houses the Seventh Fleet's amphibian squadron. It is also one of five main bases of the Maritime SDF.