Yamato Museum (Kure Maritime Museum) — Attraction in Kure

Located in Kure City, Yamato Museum houses a 10:1 model of Japan's most well-known WWII battleship Yamato. The museum can be reached by either West JR Kure Line from Hiroshima station or Hiroshima-Kure-Matsuyama Ferry from Hiroshima Port.

Although Kure looks like a small town today, it was the birthplace of the said most powerful class of battleship in WWII.

The Yamato battleship model was undoubtedly the most popular spot of the museum. A theater at the second floor featured an animated illustration of the interior and the construction process of the battleship.

The exhibition surrounding this giant model displayed the detailed historical background and the technology deployed onto the battleship. However, it was mostly in Japanese which took me about four hours to grasp the basic idea of the paragraphs through the mix of guess-peculation and online dictionary till my phone and mobile charger pretty much went out of battery.

There was also exhibition of fighter plane, torpedo, submarine, and ammunition used by Japan troop in WWII. The golden flower symbol at the front top of Yamato served as a unique signature for ID confirmation during the Japan-France joint effort of wreckage search, based from a TV documentary in the museum.

It was said that the round front of the ship bottom was unique among battleships in WWII. Such design has been applied to contemporary super sized cargo ships...

Visiting from Australia, came early November on a Friday morning. There were a few people around, but it wasn't overwhelmingly busy. I don't recall how much the museum-only ticket cost, as we just purchased the combined ticket (1200 yen) for entry to a seasonal exhibit at the time. This was probably a mistake as we had no idea what it was and couldn't appreciate what was on display, so not great value for money.

I definitely recommend you bring earphones and do the English audio tour by yourself! Barely any of this experience has English printed on the exhibits and you'll miss out on some really significant stuff, as you can't just use your phone's camera to Google translate everything (photography disallowed for most things). There are some fascinating hand written wills from sailors to their families, postcards, some incredibly tragic stuff. One such exhibit detailed while a submarine was inoperable and taking on water, the captain wrote a request for the families of his crew to be allowed extra bereavement leave for the inevitable losses about to occur.

We had very limited time and I regret it, you should definitely allow a solid 2-2.5 hours here if you visit. This doesn't include the sub or its museum next...

Excellent museum. A short walk clearly signposted from Kure train station. If you like your WW1/2 history and think you might enjoy this I don't reckon you'll be disappointed. I can't read or speak Japanese, but still managed to spend over 3 hours poring over the available info. Most of the stuff is in Japanese obviously and if you can't read it you are missing out on a lot of it but I didn't feel ripped off. English summaries are posted for most exhibits and you can download their app for free and connect to their wifi to use it as an audio-guide in various languages (so bring your earphones). It goes into the history of Kure as a shipbuilding centre and talks about many more ships than just Yamato but that ship is used as a worthy centerpiece. They also have a Zero fighter in there and lots of other interesting artefacts, but the star attraction is the 1:10 scale model of Yamato which is awesome to behold. It's nearly worth the price of admission alone. A fitting tribute to the biggest, baddest battleship of them all. If you have any time left over the Japanese navy museum over the road is also excellent and free. All about the modern JMSDF post WW2. You can go inside the submarine they have there. Also...