On the morning of April 6, 1942, residents of Visakhapatnam saw unfamiliar aircraft circling over the city before sirens disturbed the peace. Japanese warplanes launched from the Imperial Japanese Navy light aircraft carrier Ryozo descended on strategic installations near the port, one of the most dramatic wartime incidents on India’s east coast.
The bombardment lasted only a few hours. Yet its impact permanently changed the city.
More than eight decades later, remnants of that turbulent period can be seen in Visakhapatnam. Some are hidden beneath overgrown vegetation and extended neighborhoods. Others emerge unexpectedly along the shoreline after monsoon erosion and low tide. Together, they tell the story of a port city that found itself on the front lines of World War II.
Historian and historian Edward Paul, who has extensively documented Visakhapatnam’s wartime past, says that fears of Japanese occupation deeply affected both the administration and the city’s residents. “There was a fear of Japanese occupation of the port city of Visakhapatnam, both in the minds of the officials responsible for the security of the city as well as in the minds of the people living in the city,” he says.
That fear shaped the city in the early 1940s.
When war came to Vizag
World War II began in Europe in 1939, but in early 1942 The conflict spread deep into Asia After the Japanese advanced from Malaya, Singapore and Burma. British officials feared that India’s eastern coastline might be vulnerable to Japanese attack.
Visakhapatnam, with its port and strategic location midway along the east coast, quickly gained military importance.
According to Edward Paul, Army, Navy and Air Force contingents began arriving in the city from 1940 onwards. Air raid precaution systems were introduced, trenches were dug, bunkers were constructed and civilian evacuation exercises were conducted. A coastal defense flight was established in the city in February 1942, one of six such units established on the Indian coastline, the others being based at Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi and Cochin. This unit had come into existence barely a few weeks before the attack.
On April 6, 1942, the fears became reality.
Vizag’s concrete walls bring back memories of World War II threats
That morning, in the south, Kokanada was bombed by a single-engine aircraft, becoming the first city in India to be attacked by air. The Hindu Mukund Padmanabhan recorded in his book The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Stunned a Japanese Non-Invasion, Published in 2024. Visakhapatnam was attacked thrice in a single day and suffered heavy losses.
Ryujo’s aircraft, operating as part of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s carrier force in the Bay of Bengal, attacked in three separate waves. The morning attacks were directed at ships entering the city’s port. In the early afternoon, the first wave of five Type 97 bombers from Ryujo attacked the port. Another attack took place in the evening. A ship docked in the harbor carrying approximately 350 kilograms of explosives narrowly escaped the raid, a disaster that has gone largely unrecorded in popular memory.
The human cost was significant. One bomb fell directly on a shelter in the shipyard, killing five and injuring at least 40, bringing the total to at least eight in the day-long raid. Edward Paul says that after this, panic spread rapidly in the entire city. “Before the next sunrise, two-thirds of the people fled to the suburbs on bullock carts, bicycles or any means of transport available to them,” he notes.
Mukunda Padmanabhan also records in his book that the exodus from Visakhapatnam had begun months before the bombing and that the raid of April 6, 1942 had led to the evacuation of the city.
Rumors, evacuation plans and fear gripped many towns and cities as the British administration struggled to respond to possible attacks by the Japanese.
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pillbox along the coast
The least documented wartime remains in the city are pillboxes scattered along parts of the beach.
These small reinforced concrete defensive structures were built as part of British coastal defense preparations during World War II. Many remain partially buried under sand deposits and coastal vegetation.
One such pillbox on the beach road is rarely encountered after the monsoon season, when soil erosion occurs. Residents say the remains become more visible during low tide, providing a glimpse of wartime defenses that have otherwise disappeared beneath the city’s changing coastline.
In recent years attention has also been drawn to the neglect of these wartime bunkers and pillboxes, many of which are unmaintained and not preserved.
An inside view of the World War II pillbox at Jalaripeta, which is buried under a pile of debris and garbage in Visakhapatnam. | Photo Courtesy: KR Deepak
naval shore battery
One of the most visible surviving wartime institutions is the Naval Coast Battery under Eastern Naval Command.
Its origins date back to 1940, when British military authorities sought to establish coastal artillery positions to defend Visakhapatnam against a possible Japanese invasion.
Edward Paul states that the army needed a clear location along the seashore for heavy artillery and eventually identified a coastal area occupied by fishing settlements. The residents were relocated under wartime emergency rules and moved to a nearby area known as Kotha Jalaripeta.
This position became home to the 5th Indian Heavy Battery, equipped with six-inch guns. Historical accounts trace the evolution of the establishment from a wartime coastal defense unit to the present day Naval Coast Battery functioning under Eastern Naval Command. Although access to the operational complex is restricted, the battery still stands as a direct institutional link to the city’s wartime history.
Children playing on a World War II pill box, which was exposed after sand was cleared by heavy tidal waves at Peda Jalaripeta during Cyclone Hudhud that hit the coast on October 12, 2014, in Visakhapatnam, July 12, 2016. | Photo Courtesy: KR Deepak
Forgotten Fortifications
The city’s wartime remains are not limited to the beach.
In recent years, reinforced concrete structures discovered near the Daspalla Hills have attracted the attention of historians and heritage enthusiasts. It is believed that these structures served as wartime defense fortifications or gun emplacements towards the Bay of Bengal.
Researchers studying the site noted similarities between the structures and military observation or artillery positions used during World War II.
Visakhapatnam once had an extensive network of trenches, bunkers and defense posts built during the war years. As the city expanded into a major urban centre, most of them disappeared.
Some remains survive quietly in institutional complexes, port complexes and inaccessible corners of the city.
AU and the war years
Andhra University was one of the consequences of Japanese bombing.
Within days of the air raid, military officials requisitioned university buildings and lands for wartime purposes. The institution was forced to shift its academic activities outside the city.
Edward Paul says, the university transferred most of its departments to Guntur in April 1942, while the chemistry department was operated from Madras.
“For three years, the university was based outside Visakhapatnam and all their buildings were used by the army,” he said. The university returned to the city only after the war ended in 1945.
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submarine under the bay
The coast of Visakhapatnam also holds memories of the underwater warfare of World War II.
Apart from the wreck of PNS Ghazi, the remains of Imperial Japanese Navy submarine RO-110 are believed to lie in the Bay of Bengal near Rambilli. The submarine was sunk by depth charges on or around 11 February 1944 by the Royal Australian Navy corvettes HMAS Launceston and HMAS Ipswich and the Royal Indian Navy sloop HMIS Jumna during Allied anti-submarine operations in the area.
Laid down at Kawasaki-Kobe Shipyard in August 1942 and launched in January 1943, RO-110 operated from Penang, Malaya, and was deployed for patrol duties in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. During her third and final war patrol, the submarine attacked the Calcutta-bound Allied convoy JC-36 and fired two torpedoes at the British merchant ship Asphalion before being tracked and sunk by escorting warships off the Visakhapatnam coast. Japanese naval records later declared the submarine lost and all 47 personnel aboard were believed to have been killed.
The presence of underwater submarine wrecks near the coast underlines the strategic importance of Visakhapatnam in the larger area of the Indian Ocean conflict during World War II.
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cherish memories
This port remains the centerpiece of Visakhapatnam’s wartime story.
During the war years, the port came under military administration due to its strategic importance to Allied operations in the Bay of Bengal. Edward Paul states that the port, originally administered by the Bengal Nagpur Railway, was taken over by the War Department in 1942 and remained under military control for about four years.
One of the few surviving memorials of the April 1942 raid is a plaque commemorating those killed in the harbor shelter attack. Mukund Padmanabhan says the Visakha Museum also displays the casing of the 250 kg unexploded bomb recovered after the attack, which, in his words, has become a “tourist attraction”.
Modern Visakhapatnam is often defined by its ports, shipbuilding facilities, naval establishments, pharmaceutical industries and technology corridors. Yet beneath that rapidly changing urban landscape lie quiet memories of a period when the city stood on the edge of global conflict.
