The Kanoya Naval Air Group was formed on 1 April 1936 and, by English Wikipedia’s account, was the oldest medium-bomber unit in the Imperial Navy. Its twin-engined Mitsubishi G3Ms went into combat in August 1937, at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, flying long-range raids against Chinese targets. In September 1941 the group re-equipped with the G4M, the bomber that would carry the navy’s land-based air war across the Pacific.

Kanoya’s bombers were part of the navy’s land-based striking force in the opening months of the Pacific War. Their record belongs to the war history on the JASDF page and in the combat section of this service’s page; this base page keeps to what happened at Kanoya itself.

In the spring of 1945 Kanoya became the main operational base for the navy’s organised suicide attacks against the American fleet off Okinawa, the Kikusui operations. Japanese Wikipedia counts 828 special-attack airmen who sortied from Kanoya during the Okinawa campaign.

The figure is the Japanese Wikipedia article’s and was not checked against an official roll here; totals for the whole kamikaze campaign vary by source and are not given. After the surrender, US Fifth Air Force units held the base from 3 September 1945 until November 1948.

The post-war navy returned to Kanoya early. The National Police Reserve set up a garrison here on 1 December 1950, and the sources give three dates for the JMSDF: 1 December 1953 for the first air unit, 1 July 1954 for JMSDF control, and 21 November 1955 for the full transfer. The difference reflects a gradual handover rather than a single event.

Fleet Air Wing 1 then flew almost every Japanese patrol type. P2V-7 Neptunes flew until 27 February 1971, after P-2Js had begun arriving on 23 April 1970. S2F-1 Trackers of the 11th Squadron flew from 1973 until 30 March 1984. The P-3C arrived on 10 July 1989, and a second squadron, the 7th, formed on 1 December 1987 and flew P-2Js until May 1994. In July 2019 the 1st Squadron converted to the Kawasaki P-1.

The aircraft that Kanoya flew in the Cold War tell the story of how Japan rebuilt a naval air arm. The first anti-submarine aircraft were American cast-offs: the JMSDF received 60 Grumman S2F-1 Trackers from US stocks in 1957 and flew them until 1984, calling them Aotaka, the blue hawk. At Kanoya the 11th Squadron joined Fleet Air Wing 1 with Trackers on 1 March 1973 and was disbanded when the type retired on 30 March 1984.

The Lockheed P2V-7 Neptune was the wing’s first long-range patrol aircraft. Rather than buy a new type, Japan rebuilt it: Kawasaki replaced the piston engines with turboprops and flew the first P-2J on 21 July 1966, and built 83 in all. Kanoya’s 1st Squadron began receiving them on 23 April 1970, and the last P2V-7 left the base on 27 February 1971. The P-2J in turn gave way to the licence-built P-3C from 1989, and the Orion to the Japanese-designed P-1 in 2019, so that in fifty years Kanoya’s patrol squadron went from second-hand American aircraft to an aircraft designed in Japan.

The Kanoya Air Base Museum opened in December 1973 and moved into a new building in July 1993. Japanese Wikipedia counts about 5,500 items, among them a Zero Type 52 restored from two recovered airframes, an Imperial Navy H8K flying boat, and post-war types including the P-2, HSS-2B, SNJ-5 and P-3C. The museum keeps the memory of the special-attack units alongside that of the post-war navy.

American aircraft have returned in recent years. In July 2018 the US Marine Corps announced KC-130 tanker training at Kanoya, and Japanese Wikipedia records US MQ-9 drones deployed here from 2022; one overran the runway on 22 August 2023.