Devil's Sea

The Formosa Triangle contains most of the northeast Philippine Sea.

Map of the Izu Islands, centre of the Devil's Sea legend.

Miyake Island about 100 km south of Tokyo

Miyake Island from Kozu Island

The Devil's Sea (魔の海, Ma no Umi^?), also known as the Dragon's Triangle, the Formosa (Taiwan) Triangle (traditional Chinese: 福爾摩沙三角; simplified Chinese: 福尔摩沙三角; pinyin: Fúěrmóshā Sānjiǎo) and the "Pacific Bermuda Triangle", is a region of the Pacific around Miyake Island, about 100 km south of Tokyo. The size and area varies with the report (the only reports stem from the 1950s), with various reports placing it 70 miles (110 km) from an unspecified part of Japan's east coast, 300 miles (480 km) from the coast, and even near Iwo Jima, 750 miles (1,210 km) from the coast.(Kusche:259-260)

The area 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 Japanese government sent a research vessel boarded by over 100 scientists 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 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. ^[1] 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.(Kusche: 258)

See also

• Vile Vortices

References

1. ^ The Tsunami Risks Project: Causes

• Kusche, Lawrence David (1975). The Bermuda Triangle mystery - solved. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-012475-X. 
• Scientific survey of Myojin-sho