Japan is one of only 25 countries in the world without military – at least by some people’s definition. Others see it a little bit different thanks to Japan’s Self-Defense Force (自衛隊, Jieitai) with active personnel of about 240,000 people – plus about 60,000 in reserve. Abandoned military institutions are nevertheless rare in Japan, usually places (partly) given up by the Americans, like the Tachikawa Air Base, the Fuchu Air Base or Camp Drake – all located in the Tokyo / Yokohama area.
So when I was back in my home country of Germany for vacation I was eager to explore a military basis of the Federal Armed Forces / Federal Defense Force / German armed forces – or just Bundeswehr (that’s what they are called in German). While the Jieitai are still going strong the Bundeswehr had to deal with several structural reforms over the past two decades, main reasons for that being the fall of the Iron Curtain and the German reunification in 1990. Back in the 1980s the Bundeswehr had about half a million employees (career soldiers and conscripts), in 2010 the number was down to 250,000 – with plans to reduce further to a little as 175,000 soldiers; about a quarter of what both German armies (Bundeswehr and NVA (Nationale Volksarmee – National People’s Army)) had combined in the late 1980s… Reducing personnel that seriously you can’t (and won’t…) maintain all the military bases. A lot of them were demolished, some got reconverted to housing projects and business parks – but a few slipped through the cracks and became abandoned; because nobody took proper care or because there were problems reusing the property.
The Federal Armed Forces Depot Pfeddersheim (Bundeswehr-Depot Pfeddersheim – officially “Wehrbereichsgerätelager IV”) is one of these cases where the infamous German bureaucracy took its toll; on a personal note: German bureaucracy actually isn’t that bad, especially when compared to other countries. Built to house Car Pool Company 621 (Fahrzeugpark-Kompanie 621 – and by company I mean the military unit, not the business…) in the early 1950s on the site of the the cannery Braun AG (Konservenfabrik Braun AG), a factory of international fame in business from 1871 till 1951, the depot was one of the main Bundeswehr storages in Germany for many decades. It was closed with effect from 2004-12-31 with the last employees leaving by 2005-03-31 – at that point only 14 people were working at the depot.
Of course early on local politicians were aware what was going to happen and they tried to make use of the location as smoothly as possible, even visiting the still active depot in late 2004. Since Pfeddersheim lost its indepence in 1969 and now is part of the venerable city of Worms a lot of people have a say in what’s going to happen – the Institute for Federal Real Estate (Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben / BIMA), a city planning officer from Worms, a municipal administrator from Pfeddersheim and of course the citizens of Pfeddersheim; just to name a few. And while everybody was debating whether the depot should be turned into a housing project with a supermarket or being used by established and new businesses the usual hordes of bored youth vandals trashed the place – seven years later the property is still for sale, one of the latest suggestions was to build a showcase project for climate protection housing.
Well at least the buildings were still standing when I paid them a visit in July of 2011 with my high school friend Ira. The main gate was wide open when we arrived and as we were about to enter a building we saw a guy on a bike coming towards us. Judging by his shirt he must have worked for the local public utility company and brought back one of the municipal vehicles. So I told him what I was doing (urbex, Japan, photos…) and if we could take some pictures – he didn’t seem to like the idea, but after some more explanation he said that the main gate actually isn’t locked sometimes; so I told him that we didn’t see him if he didn’t see us – and off he went, with a word of warning that his colleague will lock the gate in the near future. So while I was exploring the first building Ira got familiar with the area and had a look for the colleague to come. When we were about to enter the second building the other guy actually showed up in a car – he stopped next to us, so I told him what I was doing (urbex, Japan, photos…) and if it was okay to take some pictures. He said it was and drove away only to be back a couple of seconds later. “Why?” Well, to keep the memories about those places alive – it’s always nice to hear from people who have been to / worked at places that I visited in their abandoned state. He put up a “those young, crazy people – I’m going to have a beer now and do better things with my time” smile and drove away, this time for good. So Ira and I explored the second building, the open repair shop and strolled along the sealed warehouses and garages. When we were about to leave we found the main gate closed – and locked. The second guy forgot to mention that he would actually do that! Luckily we found an alternative way in and out of the depot while exploring the location – and now was the time to make use of that knowledge…
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Thanks for the report 🙂 I would just like to say something a bit negative though: you’re obviously actively working on your SEO really intensively but the amount of keywords / synonyms in all your recent articles are a bit overwhelming, and that makes the reading reallllyyyyy painful.
I would rather concentrate on the quality: more paragraphs, space, oxygen and less synonyms or redundant keywords. I feel like you’re trying to spam Google with keywords, but instead it’s the reader’s eyes which are spammed :p Don’t worry about that I want to say, Google is getting more clever everyday, your website will get the number of visitors he deserves. That’s what I believe. Quality will be rewarded better tomorrow (though it’s already quite working via social networks and visitors’ appreciations).
Don’t take it on the wrong way, I just want to be helpful 🙂
I’m working on my what? I actually had to look up the term on Wikipedia. Had no clue what a PageRank was until I read about it over at Michael Gakuran’s page. Since you seem to be an expert on the topic: Any advice on SEO? (Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m just curious and willing to learn! :))
Variety is the spice of life and blogs that only write a couple of lines about every location probably don’t really have to use synonyms… My articles became painfully long recently, so I might cut down on the text part in general.
It’s getting more complicated when the location you write about doesn’t correspond with the language you write in. E.g. look up Bundeswehr in a dictionary – there are several translations for the term. And this location (as many others) is known under several names for various reasons. Mentioning them goes both ways – it also enables people to find stuff on other blogs, like… uhm… Michael’s. Sure, I could stick with one (English) word for each term, but mentioning the local monikers add some flavor IMHO.
Yes, of course, I think sometimes we should put translations or synonyms, but maybe a bit more parsimoniously. It’s not about PR (this is something else, and probably not to be taken seriously anymore as there is not much correlation between PR and number of visitors now).
I’m not a SEO professional, but it seems you’ll get an advantage in the near future if Google “thinks” your page has “a nice smell” of quality. By checking the spelling, images, layout, loading speed… then the second one, harder, is to keep the visitors interested and eager to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or to subscribe to our RSS, but it’s harder… we really need to stand out at first sight (people are “so busy” nowadays ;)). I personally think I’m losing visitors because of my websites low-performance in term of speed and the worst is that I don’t really know what to do about it 😦 (maybe getting a more expensive hosting?). WordPress.com seems to really fast though!
Thanks a lot for the explanation! I seriously had no clue about the whole topic – this really started out as just another WordPress blog and it took me a year to switch to another skin or theme or whatever they are called here. Still don’t know what a widget is and what it does. I didn’t even read many blogs before I started this one, my first one. Never had a homepage, not even a Myspace account. Twitter and Facebook I set up because people seem to like it – the reason I didn’t automatize the process is because I think if somebody takes the time to read my messages the least they can expect that I wrote them myself. My average monthly visitor numbers strongly depend on if I got lucky to get picked up by some of the sources I linked on the “About / Contact” page – but I don’t even have an account on any of those pages. I am happy about everybody who is interested in the topic and my articles, but this is basically still another WordPress blog.
You losing visitors might be seasonal – I think in winter less people are interested in an outdoor topic like this.
What is so striking about this one to me is just how “clean” everything looks. I mean of course there is the obvious decay over time that comes with it being abandoned for so long, but the areas look like they were spotless when they left the place.
Or perhaps people that explore it always bring brooms and mops with them 😛
Since the Bundeswehr isn’t allow to bomb things or shoot people I guess they put all their energy into keeping the places they stay neat. 🙂
The places I explored in Germany were all in pretty good shape. I think there are way more arsonists in Japan than in Germany…