Shipgirl Program/History

The International Naval Ministry was started in 1983, two years after the Japanese built their first shipgirl. The Ministry keeps a record of their history in their vault in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here are the records.

1940s
After WWII, Japan was suffering from understaffing and underpopulation. Article 9 of the Potsdam Agreement banned Japan from ever having a military. Immediately after that, Japan began looking for loopholes to have a standing military.

Their main ramp is the JSDF, the Japanese Self Defense Force, meant to protect and defend Japan.

The sunken ships of WWII were kept as sovereign Japanese waters.

1970s
In the early 1970s, a few specks were found on radar in Soviet waters north of Tiksi, Russia. At first, they weren't much of a concern, but analysts were concerned when those specks made near weekly passage through the Bering Strait, between Russia and Alaska. No one knew who they were, but in 1977, a raid was done in Vladivostok, where it was found that these passages were being made by an early form of abyssal, and it was being backed by Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev.

1980s
Although Emperor Hirohito had publicly denied any involvement in a shipgirl program during a Nagoya press conference in 1979, leaked files from Chinese whistleblowers had revealed many failed attempts at creating shipgirls in 1980. This crude attempt at creating shipgirls would inject pre-existing human girls with the spirits of Japanese ships from the WWII era. All the test subjects died, since their bodies could not control the energy the essence needed to keep running.

In early 1981, a scientist named Mitsuru Shimazaki devised an alternative method for the shipgirl program: to essentially build girls from scratch. These genetically engineered girls could withstand the weight and pressure of the essential energy and were able to convert food into fuel more efficiently, and the first shipgirl, Yamato, was successfully built and operational on July 2, 1981. Originally meant to merely supplement the already currently existing naval branch of the JSDF, shipgirl Yamato showed exceptional prowess with various aspects of naval duty. After these tests on Yamato showed amazing results, the Japanese Shipgirl Program was formally established on February 11, 1982.

Two former naval bases were converted into shipgirl bases, Hokkaido Base on the island of Hokkaido, and Sendai Base on the River Sendai. Throughout the period from 1982 to 1984, seven more shipgirls were commissioned: Musashi, Asashio, Mamiya, Nagato, Mutsu, Kaiyou, and Mikuma. Shipgirl creation at the time was slow and expensive, and by mid-1985, when the Shipgirl Program deployed on it's first mission, there were only fifteen shipgirls in the world: twelve Japanese and three American.

Operation Myrtle (January 1, 1985 - March 12, 1985)
On New Years' Day 1985, five Japanese shipgirls accompanied the JS Ikumo, which carried Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, on a trip to Taipei to meet with Pan-Asian officials. While the Ikumo was harboured in Taipei, the five shipgirls, among them the two Yamato-class battleships, Yamato and Musashi, were to patrol the East Chinese Sea. During the time, there were reports of a Chinese plot to attack southern Japan, and the shipgirls were meant to both be a display of power projection and earnest patrolling.

On February 19, 1985, the Filipino cargo ship MV Visayas was sunk roughly 80 kilometers west of Itbayat Island, Philippines, resulting in the deaths of all 98 crewmen onboard. While no official charges were made, it is assumed the shipgirls sank the vessels. This was the catalyst of the worsening relations between the Philippines and Japan in the 1980s.

In March 1985, ten Russian-flagged abyssals were confronted about 200 miles east of Fuzhou, China. The abyssals were sunk within an hour, however, three of the five shipgirls, Yamato, Mutsu, and Mikuma, were severely damaged and had to be sent back to Hiroshima for treatment.

Operation Myrtle was originally scheduled to last until June, however, realizing the fact that the shipgirls were mostly ill-trained at combat, they sent all of them home and shut down the Operation on March 12.

Soon after, the first shipgirl academy, meant to train the shipgirls on combat and patriotism, was opened in Hokkaido during the summer of 1985.

Operation Riverbed (May 19, 1985 - February 10, 1986)
During the 1980s, the CIA funded a series of pro-American dictators in Central America, mostly in Nicaragua. During then, a small American shipgirl program, headed by flag girl Iowa, was sent to Potosi, Nicaragua. A small nationalist front in Nicaragua, known as La Junta de la Reconstruccion Nacional ("The Union of National Reconstruction" in Spanish) committed a coup d'etat against the government and ousted then president Anastasio Somoza Debayle, on July 17, 1979.

The nationalist and socialist platform that the Junta ran on was incompatible with the previously pro-American dictator Debayle. Therefore, the CIA paid off Daniel Ortega, the coordinator of the Junta, to commit a mutiny and take power of the entire party. He did, and by January 10, 1985, Ortega became the 58th President of Nicaragua.

In spring 1985, American wiretappers in Managua intercepted transcripts of a numbers station south of Lake Managua, stating that a front that went under Aire y Agua ("Air and Water" in Spanish) that were planning on assassinating Ortega and ousting the Junta. Upon getting word of it, the American shipgirls bombed the city that the front was located in, killing 1,450 people, and ending the front. This was known as the Mateare Massacre.

Kauai Night Battle
On January 4, 1986, ten shipgirls: eight Japanese, and two Americans, were stationed off the coast of Lihue, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. They were ordered to do light patrol work. However, after encountering a fleet of sixteen belligerent abyssal, they engaged in the first battle of the First Abyssal War. The shipgirls won, however, the abyssals declared war on the morning of January 5th.

Operation Sublime
Soon after, the Japanese ran up their production of shipgirls, and by 1986, Japan had 50 shipgirls, and it was estimated there were 60-70 abyssals, at the time funded by the Soviet Union. Therefore, the government placed Nagato Shimasaki, cousin of Yamato Shimasaki, in charge of logistics and plannings. For the first strike, a plan codenamed Operation Sublime was enacted on February 2, 1986. A week later, on February 9, the First Shipgirl Fleet, headed by Yamato, attacked the abyssal base on Novaya Zemlya Island, north of Russia. After a 16-hour battle, the shipgirls won, taking control of the Eastern Arctic waters.

Indigo Juniper
Operation Indigo Juniper, codenamed Operation IJ, was ordered under Chief of Staff General Hitoshi Mori, on August 4, 1986. It involved drawing the abyssal command out to a fake snipe operation in the Bering Strait, only to attack their base in Anadyr, Chukotka, USSR. The plan failed, leading to 56 shipgirls being sunk in the efforts. It is believed that this was due to wiretapping somewhere to the nearby Kodiak, Alaska shipgirl base.

Attu Island bombing
While America allowed Japanese shipgirls limited use of their bases, the American shipgirl program didn't ender the abyssal war until Christmas Day 1986, where at 3:19 a.m., 29 abyssals bombed the base on Attu Island, Alaska. 12 shipgirls were killed. By New Years Day 1987, America joined Japan in the war.

Mass productions
On the Japanese end, Commander Huransu Shoshito took office as the Commander for the First Shipgirl Fleet, headquartered at the Hokkaido base, in 1987. After having enemy lines wiretapped, he discovered methods of mass-production planning for abyssals. Using this, he ran up the production of shipgirls. However, it was clear they were outnumbered. By 1988, the abyssal population was at 4,000, compared to only 900 or so shipgirls.

Royal Navy Shipgirl Programme
The British shipgirl program was founded on September 10, 1988, as a response to the worsening problems in the Pacific. The British sent about 100 shipgirls to aid in the efforts. Many of them sank, and only 5 British shipgirls remained by 1989.

Operation Deepwater
Knowing of an enemy tactics hub off of the coast of Magadan, in the Sea of Okhotsk, 250 shipgirls, mostly Japanese and American, sunk mines around the port, seizing it up before using the newly developed aircraft carrier class to deliver long-range aerial attacks. After winning, the war turned in their favour.

Abyssal surrender
On January 23, 1990, the abyssals videotaped a recording of their surrender letter from a secret base believed to be in Ensenada, Mexico. Attempts to find the base were unsuccessful.

Aftermath of the First Abyssal War
After the abyssal war, the RIJN and the Naval Ministry demanded the shipgirls stay enlisted for 5 years, in case war breaks out again. In prize cases, for example, Yamato, they were not allowed to leave at all.

Depression, drug abuse, and suicide became rampant in this era. Shipgirl healthcare and morale support were rudimentary in Japan at the time, and to this day, fewer than a half dozen Japanese shipgirls from the First Abyssal War are still around today: Mamiya, Ural Maru, Yamato, and Musashi. The RIJN statistics board that during the 1990 to 1993 period, just as many shipgirls died of drug overdoses or suicide than were sunk in the First Abyssal War. Since shipgirls cannot drown or be injured by a typical gunshot wound, hanging and disembowelment were preferred methods of suicide among the shipgirl program. The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force attributes this spike in suicide to an innate need in shipgirls to fight, and a feeling of worthlessness and uselessness when there is no greater purpose to serve.

Shipgirl proliferation
Throughout the early 1990s, shipgirl programs worldwide became more popular. Before 1988, only three countries had shipgirls: Japan (founded 1983), America (founded 1984), and Britain (founded 1988). After the human victory of the First Abyssal War, several countries around the Pacific started shipgirl programs of their own, including China (1990), the Philippines (1994), Russia (1992), and Indonesia (1991). This was due to both the fear of another abyssal war and the fear that Japan would use their program and their shipgirls for imperialist expansion.

Operation Lateralus (summer-winter 1992)
On June 4, 1992, the port of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was bombed, killing seventeen people, including the Minister of Finance, Anwar Ibrahim. The plot was masterminded by the Malay Liberation Front (MLF), and was funded covertly by Japanese funds, in exchange for a expanse on the lease of the shipgirl base in the East Borneo Region of Malaysia.

Three days later, on June 7, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was bombed, killing 119 people. The air traffic control tower was brought down in the bombing. This rendered the airport inoperable.

Six days later, on June 13, there was a coordinated attack on the roads surrounding the capitol building. All the meanwhile, it is purported shipgirls bombed the base in Port Klang, in case the officials attempted to escape.

The prime minister, Khan Qendin, and the Minister of War, Min Abraham, was executed the following morning. The MLF ruled for four months, until the public relation nightmare that ensued upon the Japanese shipgirl program led the Japanese shipgirl fleet, led by Yamato and new shipgirl Tenryuu, to help the Malaysian navy overthrow the MLF by December 14, 1992.