JMSDF Sasebo Naval Base (佐世保地方隊)

Sasebo Naval Base is the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force installation at Sasebo, on the north-west coast of Kyushu, Japan. It is not a single site but a group of ports and shore facilities distributed across several districts of Sasebo City, and it is the seat of the Sasebo District Force, the regional command responsible for the western approaches to Japan.

The district's area of responsibility covers the coastal waters from western Yamaguchi Prefecture on the Tsushima Strait and Sea of Japan side to western Kagoshima Prefecture on the Pacific side, taking in the waters off Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures. Assigned tasks are security and defence of that area, disaster relief dispatch, logistic support to operational formations such as the Self Defense Fleet, mine and explosive ordnance disposal, and civil-military liaison. Ships under the District Force include the 43rd Mine Warfare Force, with the 3rd Missile Boat Flotilla and the Shimonoseki Base Corps, and the 46th Mine Warfare Force with the Okinawa Base Corps. Hayabusa-class patrol boats have been deployed to Sasebo in sequence for interdiction of small craft operating to and from North Korea.

Escort forces at Sasebo comprise the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 13th Escort Flotillas of the Fleet Escort Force, based in the Hirase District alongside the Sasebo District Force headquarters, Sasebo Communications Command, the district police and the music corps. The Sakibe District holds the Sasebo Education Corps, the Sasebo Guard, the 3rd Missile Boat Flotilla and the Sasebo Ammunition Maintenance Supply Station; a Ground Self-Defense Force branch was opened there in March 2019, stationing the Combat Landing Battalion of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade. The Tategami District contains the Sasebo Repair Supply Station and the Sasebo Magnetic Measurement Station. The Hidzukushi District houses the Sasebo Base Business Corps, the Mine Warfare Force and its 2nd Mine Warfare Force, the maritime training guidance team and the sanitation corps. Piers in the Hirase District for 5,000-ton class destroyers were completed in March 1986 and May 1989.

The base was established on 16 November 1953, when the Sasebo District Force of the National Safety Agency Coastal Safety Force was formed on the site of a former garrison in the Kurashima area, the city having offered land at Hidzukushi. The force passed to the Maritime Self-Defense Force on 1 July 1954, and the district headquarters moved to its present location in March 1968.