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Nobu Shirase
last update: Jan 24, 2008 06:53 PM
1861 - 1946
Place of Birth:
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Biography
Nobu Shirase, an unknown lieutenant in the Japanese Navy, organised an Antarctic expedition which departed from Tokyo on 1 December 1910 in the "Kainan Maru". Unable to land on Victoria Land in March 1911, they were forced to winter in Sydney. By the middle of January 1912, the "Kainan Maru" was back in the Ross Sea, where Shirase realized that he was too far behind the other explorers to reach the Pole first. Once they landed at the Ross Ice Shelf, Shirase clamed the whole area as the "Yamato Snow Plain", but no one (not even Japan) took the claim seriously. Even though the crew didn't really discover anything, they were still welcomed back as heroes when they returned to Yokohama on 20 June 1912.
