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Devil's Sea
The Devil's Sea (魔の海 in Japanese), also known as the Pacific Bermuda Triangle, Formosa (Taiwan) Triangle, 福爾摩沙三角, 福尔摩沙三角, is a region of the Pacific around Miyake Island, about 60 miles (100 km) south of Tokyo. The area is also known as the Dragon's Triangle because of ancient legends about dragons that lived off the coast of Japan.
The Devil's Sea is said to be a danger zone on Japanese maps, according to Charles Berlitz's books The Bermuda Triangle (1974) and The Dragon's Triangle (1989). He states that in the peacetime years between 1952-54 Japan lost 5 military vessels with crews lost totalling over 700 people and that the Japanese government sent a research vessel with over 100 scientists on board to study the Devil's Sea, and that this ship too vanished; and finally that the area was officially declared a danger zone.
According to Larry Kusche's investigation, these "military vessels" were fishing vessels, and some of them were lost outside the Devil's Sea, even as far away as near Iwo Jima, 1000 km to the south. He also points out that, at that time, hundreds of fishing boats were lost around Japan every year. The Japanese research vessel that Berlitz named, Kaiyo Maru No 5, had a crew of 31 aboard. While investigating activity of an undersea volcano, Myōjin-shō, about 300 km south of the Devil's Sea, it was destroyed by an eruption on 24 September 1952. Some wreckage was recovered. At least one ship sent an SOS. The other seven boats were small fishing boats lost between April 1949 and October 1953 somewhere between Miyake Island and Iwo Jima, a distance of 750 miles.
