Archive Farms 1n 1865, following a Japanese governmental request, the French government accept a cooperation agreement to create an arsenal in Yokosuka. A forty member French naval mission is thus set up and managed by a young French naval engineer, François Léonce Verny who achieves in a few weeks a draft of a dozen pages defining the outline of the future Yokosuka arsenal the latter being then realized between 1866 and 1875. incidentally, at the moment the most important US base in the Pacific is situated on the old location of the Yokosuka arsenal. François Léonce Verny engaged a cousin, Emile de Montgolfier, as a secretary and this last photographed the arsenal and its surrounding facilities between 1869 and 1871.
Some photographs of Montgolfier are in the University Museum of Tokyo collection and in the Christian Polak collection.
