US military housing and reclamation in Honmoku: read the eras when the shoreline moved out to sea

Published: October 30, 2026 / About 11 min read

The shoreline of Honmoku moved out to sea between the 1945-50 photograph and the 1961-69 photograph. If you step through the photographs of Honmoku from the oldest, the sea side that rounded the cape is replaced by reclaimed land within the early eras, while the flat land at the tip of the cape, where US military family housing stood in rows, keeps the same use until its return on March 31, 1982. Two speeds, the sea side first and the land side later, overlap in the same frame.

This article lays the years of requisition, reclamation, and return over the photograph eras and checks which change each photograph shows in progress. The finer points of each photograph are left to the description on the spot page; here the article follows only two things, the position of the shoreline and the use of the housing area. The marker is the curve of a road that remained at the position of the old water's edge.

1945-50: the arc of the shoreline and the rows of housing

In the 1945-50 photograph, the right half of the frame is still sea, and the shoreline rounds the tip of the cape in a natural arc. On the flat land inside the shore, white square buildings line up in the same direction and at the same spacing, and the extent of the housing area can be told from its difference with the irregular, crowded houses around it.

The black strips lined up like a grid offshore are thought to be aquaculture racks, since the chronology of Naka Ward lists entries about the nori seaweed of Honmoku. The elevation of the spot is 5.2 m at the center and 4.5 m to the east, about 25 m lower than the 29.7 m to the north. The land gave way to the sea at the low end of a slope that runs down from the foot of the hill.

Requisition and a little American town

The chronology of Naka Ward names Honmoku, Negishi, and part of Yamate as the places that escaped burning while almost the whole ward burned in the Great Yokohama Air Raid of May 1945. The flat land of Honmoku that escaped the fire was requisitioned the next year; in the materials of the Yokohama City History Archives, Housing Area No. 1 was requisitioned on February 15, 1946, and Housing Area No. 2 on October 10 of the same year.

One corner of the housing area had a PX and a food store, and even a sports ground, tennis courts, and a theater. The same materials call the place a little American town. The requisition year of 1946 falls within the span of the 1945-50 photographs, so the photograph of this era shows the housing area around the time it came into use.

The sea moved first, from 1959 to 1964

The sea side began to move in 1959. In the chronology of Naka Ward, the reclamation of the sea surface of Negishi Bay broke ground in February of that year, and a completion ceremony for the first phase of the reclamation was held in March 1963. In October of the same year, 1963, grading of the industrial zone related to Honmoku Pier began, and in May 1964 the Negishi Line opened from Sakuragicho to Isogo. Four years passed from the groundbreaking to the completion of the first phase.

Throughout, the housing area remained in use for an indefinite period under the Japan-US Security Treaty. The chronology records that the housing area of Honmoku was kept even after most of the Port of Yokohama and Kannai had been returned.

Years of events and the photograph eras

In the table, the three rows from 1959 to 1964 are events on the sea side and of the railway, and the two rows for 1982 and 1987 are events on the land side. The events on the sea side fit within the span up to 1961-69, while the return and land readjustment on the land side come together from the span of 1979-83 on. In terms of photograph eras, the whole 1974-78 photograph lies between the two changes.

1961-69 and 1974-78: the land that stood still

In the 1961-69 photograph, most of the right and bottom of the frame, which were sea in 1945-50, have become land and turned into factory and port land lined with storage tanks and quays. At the position of the arc that was the water's edge in 1945-50, a single road runs with the same curve. Rather than saying the shoreline moved out to sea, it is closer to what the photograph shows to say that land was added beyond the shoreline. The upper half of this era is washed out white, and the details of the housing area cannot be read.

In the 1974-78 photograph, now in color, small buildings are scattered sparsely on yellowish grassland inside the housing area, and the difference in density from the crowded streets to the south is clear. Outside, storage tanks increased on the reclaimed land, and an elevated line ran along the eastern edge. Even about 30 years after the requisition, the use of the flat land at the tip of the cape had hardly moved since 1945-50.

From the return to the first residents

The chronology records that the last Japan-US friendship bon dance festival in the housing area was held at the PX plaza in August 1981, the year before the return. In January 1982 the land readjustment project for the Shin-Honmoku district was approved, and in March the US military housing areas, including the Yokohama Beach Housing, were returned, 81 hectares in all. Work on the basic infrastructure started in November of the same year, and in March 1987, when the project ended, the first residents moved into a 12-story building in the apartment district on the sea side.

The 1987-90 photograph shows the area just after the land readjustment project ended. Across the central area where the rows of housing stood, the grassland has turned into bare ground, and the lines of new roads run over ground with almost no buildings. From the requisition to the return was 36 years, and from the return to the first residents was 5 years. The flat land that had stayed in use as a housing area was redrawn in a single land readjustment project.

The old shoreline remained as the curve of a road

The shoreline column of the table is rewritten once in 1961-69 and then continues with the same marker, the curve of a road. The housing area column stays almost the same through 1974-78 and is rewritten from 1987-90. The 1979-83 photograph is missing its upper third and center, but the curving road in the lower half can be read, so it still works as a marker of the shoreline. As of 2026, the difference between the grid of the land readjustment and the irregular lanes that remain to the south outside it can be read as the boundary of the project area.

Comparison with other waterfronts in Yokohama

Even along the same Yokohama waterfront, whether the shape of the shore moved during the photograph eras differs from place to place. Minato Mirai is already land of freight tracks and quays in the 1945-50 photograph, and the outline of the district hardly changes through 1974-78. To the south, Kanazawa Seaside Town still has its shoreline almost as it was in 1961-69, and land white in the middle of grading appears in 1974-78. Within the eras that the photographs cover, Honmoku is the only one of the three places that captures the sea turning into land by 1961-69. The article that traces reclaimed land with aerial photographs and maps sums up how to tell reclaimed land apart.

Comparison with other former US military housing

Hikarigaoka (Former Grant Heights) in Nerima Ward is a case where quarters completed in June 1948 were fully returned on September 30, 1973, and it took about 10 years from the return until residents began moving into Hikarigaoka 5-chome in 1983, twice as long as the 5 years at Honmoku. Chatan (Mihama) in Okinawa is a case where the return of Hamby Airfield in 1981 and the reclamation of the waterfront from April 1986 to September 1987 came at the same time.

In Honmoku, reclamation of the sea went ahead first, and the land readjustment of the returned land followed about 20 years later. There are 23 years from the groundbreaking of the Negishi Bay reclamation in 1959 to the return in 1982, and the photograph eras in between show a period when only the outside of the flat land at the tip of the cape was changing. The two works were out of step in timing, and this is the main point to read when you step through the photographs of Honmoku by era.

Check with elevation and official land prices

The elevation at the center of the location is 5.2 m; the measuring point to the east is 4.5 m, the west 6.5 m, and the south 8.7 m. Only the 29.7 m to the north is a value on the hill, and both the flat land of the housing area and the reclaimed land spread only slightly above sea level. The expected flooding of low land and reclaimed land is collected from the published materials of each local government on the Hazard Map Portal Site of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

The standard site of the official land prices (Chika Koji) is a residential lot in Honmoku Sannotani, 344 m from the center. The prices per square meter, listed up to the 2026 publication, are as follows. The lowest up to the 2026 publication is 286,000 yen in 2006, and the highest up to the 2026 publication is 497,000 yen in 1994, when the records begin. Over the 12 years from 1994 to 2006 the price fell by 211,000 yen, and over the 20 years from 2006 to 2026 it rose by 71,000 yen. The 2026 price of 357,000 yen is a little over 70% of the 1994 value.

If you switch back and forth between the 1945-50 photograph and the photograph as of 2026 on the spot page for Honmoku, you can quickly find where the arc of the water's edge and the curve of the road overlap. If you step from there to 1974-78 and 1987-90, you can also confirm in the same frame the order in which the grassland turned into a grid of blocks by way of bare ground. If you step through while comparing with the years in the events table, you can tell which change, on the sea or on the land, each photograph shows in progress.

The prices in this article are actual examples at each point in time and do not reflect market prices after the article was written.