Trip Report : Okinawa, Japan | USS Emmons (June 2025)

Background

I have long thought about trying to build a photogrammetry model of the wreck of the destroyer USS Emmons (DD-457/DMS-22) which sank off of Kouri Island (Kouri Jima), Okinawa on April 7th, 1945. The Emmons sits at a depth of 130-150 feet (40-45 meters) and is largely intact; however, it is rapidly starting to fall apart. The history of the Emmons is amazing as she participated in both D-Day at Normandy Beach in the Atlantic Ocean and then in Operation Iceberg in Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean (among many other achievements).

This post will concentrate on the details of my trip including all of the flight, hotel, and dive logistics. I will write two additional posts: (1) on the history wreck itself along with detailed photos and (2) on the photogrammetry model. This is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) photogrammetry project I have taken on to date. The results will speak for themselves when I publish the model, but I am very satisfied with it.

For those that can’t wait, I have published a few photos of the wreck at the end of this post.

Travel Logistics

Compared to quite a few other locations, Okinawa is relatively east to get to, especially from the west coast of the United States. However, I did learn a few lessons that will hep others if they chose to dive this amazing wreck.

Outbound Flight

My flight path was LAX -> HND and then HND -> OKA.

Similar to the US, when you enter Japan you need to clear customs & immigration at your first port of entry. However, from my experience in doing this in the US, there is generally a bag re-check close to where you exit the customs hall and you can just drop them off and go to your next flight. I hadn’t really considered this when I booked my flights with a 100 minute layover in Haneda.

My inbound flight was about 20 minutes delayed and by the time I got my bags and cleared immigration & customs, I had about an hour before my domestic outbound flight. I had also pre-cleared through immigration using the web app that Japan has available. There were QR codes posted at the LAX boarding gate that I used to access the web app and to pre-fill all the forms which then sent me a QR code I could use to avoid some of the wait and lines at immigration.

I had my bags checked through from LAX to OKA so I thought the process would be similar to the US. It was primarily the same with the big exception that there was no bag re-check counter. When I exited the customs hall in Terminal 3, I went to the nearest ANA counter and they gave me some bad news. My domestic departing fight was leaving from Terminal 2 so I would need to take all 200 pounds of bags (5 bags total), get them onto a bus, take the bus to Terminal 2, get them off the bus, find a luggage cart, and then check them back in.

At that point, there was very little likelihood that I would make my connecting flight.

The ANA representative was very kind and offered to put my on a flight an hour later and which, importantly, left from Terminal 2 but they could accept my bags in the current Terminal 3. I’m not certain why they could do that for the later flight but not the original flight. My only thought is that the later flight was on “Solaseed” and not ANA so it left from Terminal 3 and not Terminal 2.

Lesson Learned: If you are connecting in Haneda to a domestic flight, make sure you have enough time. If you have a lot of baggage, check the inbound and outbound terminals and realize that you might have to schlep all of your luggage on/off a bus to get between terminals.

Return Flight

I flew the exact same path back. There were two unforeseen complications on the return.

(1) The first complication was that my United flight from HND -> LAX was delayed 4 hours and I figured that meant 5 or 6 and that meant a 8-9 hour layover in Haneda. I called United and, after some pleading, they moved me over the ANA flight which left later than the original United flight but before the delayed United flight was expected to depart (it ended up departing something like 5.5 hours late). I still had a 5 hour layover but ANA has a nice lounge in the International terminal.

(2) The second complication might be related to the first, but I’m not sure. I expected to be able to check my bags all the way through from Okinawa to LAX which would be “normal” in this case (especially since now both my flights were ANA but should have been possible even with a ANA/UA combination since they are partners). When I got to the check-in counter at Naha in Okinawa, I was told that (a) They could only check my bags to Haneda and that I would have to re-check them there to LAX and that (b) I couldn’t even get a seat assigned for HND-LAX and that I would have to wait until I got to Haneda as well.

I worried about the same issue of getting luggage on/off busses, etc. but it turns out that my inbound flight landed at the International terminal but I did need to get a luggage cart and schlep the luggage basically the entire length of the Haneda International Terminal through food courts, etc.

Lesson Learned: Similar to the above inbound experience, I would not expect to be able to check my luggage all the way through. I’m still not sure if it was because I had just recently changed my flight or if there is a just a limited function at the ANA domestic terminal at Naha airport.

Hotel

Local Emmons wreck expert (I’d call him “the Mayor of the Emmons“) Kurt Reese was graciously helping me with this project (it honestly would not be possible without him — more on that later). He lives near the Chatan area of Okinawa and suggested I stay there to make dive-day logistics a lot easier. I did some research and decided to stay at the Vessel Hotel Campana in the American Village area of Chatan.

Kurt picked me up at Naha airport on a Friday night, we loaded my mass of gear into his van, and we made our way to the hotel. I was a little overwhelmed by the “look” of the American Village area and thought I had arrived at a Disney town. It was painted in bright colors and had all kinds of little shops and boutiques and restaurants, but it turned out to be an ideal location. There are plenty of food options nearby within easy walking distance and the hotel was good. I got a “Premier Ocean View Twin” room in the “Main Building” and it was relatively spacious compared to some of the other hotel rooms I have stayed at on mainland Japan.

Right next to the hotel is a Lawson (basically a convenience store) which made getting some staples like water, soda, snacks, etc. very easy and convenient. There is also an Aeon Shopping Center about a 10 minute walk away that has a full grocery store, Starbucks, medical supplies, etc. in case you need anything more than what is at the Lawson.

One of the things that was VERY helpful is that the Vessel Hotel Campana had some luggage carts in the lobby area that were key to shuttling gear up/down from my 6th floor room every day.

Dining

There are plenty of dining options that are walkable from the hotel. A few of the places I ate at include:

• Vongo & Anchor – right by the hotel. Pretty decent tacos.
• Solis Grande – again, at the hotel. Basic Italian Food
• Sushi on La Cienga – as you can guess, “upscale” sushi about a 8 minute walk
• Seafood House Pier 54 – good seafood about a 10 minute walk (I had the whole fish, upper right picture below)
• Steakhouse Jam – this was a further ride from the hotel and is a teppanyaki style restaurant with great steak. William, Kurt, and I went to celebrate the final dive of the project

In addition, Kurt took me to quite a few local places. Compared to California, the prices for food are very reasonable and I love Japanese style food.

Diving Operations

As mentioned, Kurt Reese is the expert on diving the Emmons. He has, by a long shot, more dives on the wreck than anybody else and has been diving it for 24+ years. I was fortunate to get connected with Kurt through Mike Boring through Ben Lair.

There are also some local Japanese dive boats that take (primarily) recreational divers out to the wreck on weekends for 15-20 minutes of bottom time. Obviously, to get the necessary photos for a photogrammetry model, I would need more than just a recreational dive boat.

Kurt’s best friend was Chuck DeCesari who owned the boat he would dive the Emmons from. Unfortunately, Chuck passed away late last year but his son William has taken the baton and is taking divers out to the wreck — but usually only on weekends.

When I first contacted Kurt and discussed the idea of building a photogrammetry model of the Emmons, he was all-in on the idea. I told Kurt I thought it would take 4-5 dives with about 40-45 minutes of bottom time and about the same in decompression on each dive and that it would take about 8,000 photos to produce a model with the resolution and detail I wanted.

Challenges

There were quite a few obstacles to overcome for this project, some of which were controllable and some that were not.

The primary challenges were (1) the lack of sorb and helium on island, (2) we needed a boat to run out every day for 5+ days in a row and most boats only go out on the weekend, (3) I needed bailout & rebreather tanks, and (4) we needed a weather window to support those dive days.

As you can imagine, the last one of those was out of our control. We could pick a season but you never know what weather is actually going to be like. Below are screen captures of the weather forecast for Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. Note how drastically it can change overnight. Fortunately, the weather got better as we approached those days and we were able to dive on Thursday but on Friday it got significantly worse and we had, luckily, finished our project.

Tanks, Gas & Sorb

I ended up shipping sorb from Dive Gear Express to Kurt’s FPO address which was very convenient. It took a little more than a week to show up there and I had it shipped plenty ahead of time.

I could have done the dives on Air diluent, but given the fact that they would be “working dives” I really wanted to have some Helium in my diluent.

Fortunately, Kurt had access to some helium and some rebreather tanks. Before my arrival, he boosted O2 into two 3L tanks and I had asked for a simple HeliAir Diluent blend of 16/24 into two other 3L tanks. Also, very fortunately, he had plenty of 40 cu foot tanks that I could use for bailout. For bailout, I took one AL40 tank of Air, one of Nitrox 50 and hung one O2 tank on a downline from the boat.

Boat

The last thing we needed was the boat. Kurt had spoke to William who was also very supportive of the idea and agreed to plan to dive the Emmons every day while I was there. I cannot state enough how big of a sacrifice this was for both of them. Neither of them run a full-time dive operation and they both have “day jobs.”

The boat can comfortably fit up to 6-8 tech divers depending upon amount of equipment, etc. Generally, all the equipment goes up in the bow where you don your gear and back-roll into the water.

Dive Day Logistics

I would build my rebreather and camera in my room the night before and then meet Kurt at either 5am or 6am and we would pile my gear into his van and drive the 75 minutes or so to the port and stage our gear.

We would board at either 7am or 8am depending upon the day.

We would do one long dive each morning (90+ minutes).

There was varying surface currents on different days and, on a couple of the dives, there was noticeable current on the wreck. I would recommend that anybody planning to dive this wreck be comfortable dealing with currents, especially if you have a lot of gear, bailout tanks, cameras, etc.

On the wreck itself, there are three permanent mooring lines: one at the stern, one a little forward of amidships where the plaque is, and one at the bow. Every day we dove, we tied into the amidships line. I think most boats tie into the stern line since most of the “interesting stuff” is at the stern (props, depth charges, minesweeping equipment, rudder, etc.).

Kurt took a couple videos of me gearing up and getting ready to splash and then hitting the downline.

Photogrammetry Equipment

After each dive day, I would download all the photos and run “dailies” on the new photos to see how my coverage was progressing. In order to do this with 1,000s of photos, I had brought my Mac Studio computer with me and used my laptop as keyboard/mouse/display on a connection over ethernet (more on that in another post). It was something I had never done but was necessary for a project of this size and worked out quite well.

Exposure Protection

I had originally planned on only bringing a 5mm wetsuit and a heated vest.

During one of my pre-trip calls with Kurt, he recommended I also bring my drysuit if I thought I would get cold. I ended up bringing both and I’m glad that I did. The first day, I dove in my wetsuit and heated vest with a 90 minute runtime dive and got cold on my 45 minutes of deco (I know, I’m a wimp). I switched to a drysuit on the second dive and used it for the remainder of the trip.

However, it was drastic how quickly the water temperature changed in the 4 days that I was diving the drysuit. It literally went from 73/74 F to 78/79 F over the course of those 4 days. On my last dive, I had considered switching back to a wetsuit and would have been fine with the increased water temperature.

In order to save Trimix diluent, I connected my Al40 Air bailout cylinder LPI hose to my drysuit and did not have a separate drysuit cylinder.

Summary

Below is a summary of my schedule / itinerary. I had planned an extra day or two in case the weather prevented us from diving a few days. I also figured that, if necessary, I could double-up and do two dives/day on those days that did allow diving.

• Thu, Jun 5 : LAX -> HND
• Fri, Jun 6 : HND -> OKA
• Sat, Jun 7 : Recover and prep rebreather, camera, etc.
• Sun, Jun 8 : Dive Day #1
• Mon, Jun 9 : Dive Day #2
• Tue, Jun 10 : Dive Day #3
• Wed, Jun 11 : Dive Day #4
• Thu, Jun 12 : Dive Day #5
• Fri, Jun 13 : Slack Day / Off Gas & Pack
• Sat, Jun 14: Slack Day
• Sun, Jun 15 : OKA -> HND, HND -> LAX

Next Up

I have two (maybe three) follow-on posts about this trip. I will update the links below as I write and publish those posts:

USS Emmons Wreck
USS Emmons Photogrammetry Model
Photogrammetry Model “Behind the Scenes”

In the meantime, here are a few “teaser” photos I took near the stern and amidships area at the end of my last dive when I had a few spare minutes after finishing photos for the model:

Thanks To…

Obviously, for a project like this, it takes a lot of effort and planning and support from a number of people. I’d like to thank the following:

• My wife for taking care of our new puppy and the house while I was out diving in Japan (which is a country she loves to visit)
• Ben Lair for the introduction to Mike Boring and then Mike’s introduction to Kurt
• William who agreed to support the effort and take us to the wreck for 5 days in a row (6 including the day I didn’t dive) which is unheard of
• Kurt Reese – Quite simply, this project would have never happened without Kurt’s support. He is very passionate about the USS Emmons and supportive of anything that increases awareness and recording of history of the wreck.
• USS Emmons Association & NHHC – We coordinated this trip and project with both of these world-class organizations who are dedicated to preserving the history of the US Navy.