Then it occurred to me from watching submarine movies, they might be able to pump that much water from the forward bilge if they drained out the rest of the boat. They might do this without the engines if they had enough battery power. Certainly they must have had because they had been charging all night when the destroyer saw them. But if they could, why hadn’t they done so. The only reason why not was if the main hatch had been sprung when the shell hit and the entire boat had filled with water.
********
It was three days later when I walked down to the water for an early morning swim and washing. I took a bamboo spear with me, not one of the lances propelled by a sling. Anyway while I was looking for a large fish, it suddenly dawned on me that something was different. The sub was gone. It had disappeared without a trace. I hadn’t heard any engine or any noise at all to give me a clue. They must have somehow removed the wedge and slipped away using their electric motors. I don’t know the answer. I have been speculating about a lot of things; the only sure thing: his forward hatch was leaking and his propeller was jammed.
But my second guess was the prop wasn’t bent. Unless the engine or motor turned it against the wedges it wasn’t going to spring or bend it. And if they found a way to remove the wedge they could have left. Obviously that’s what happened because they were gone.
How far were they going to get with a torpedo room flooded is anybody’s guess. And another thing for sure, the periscopes were gone. But they weren’t that important unless they were going to attack somebody and that wasn’t very likely.
Two days later, I walked down to tell my Japanese about the sub. I hesitated to visit him because I had to pass the Wildcat. I was still several yards from his camp when I heard what I thought was yelling between two people in Japanese. I say they sounded as though they were angry but then they always do when they are just conversing normally. And as far as their military services go, whenever a superior talks to someone of lower rank he seems to be yelling his head off. That’s the way this was. I stopped to listen. I was becoming leery of what I was hearing. Was this new Jap from off the sub or had he been on the island from the beginning? Is this the senior officer that had been on the Jap airplane? Had he made camp farther up in the jungle, because they couldn’t get along or were both of them there for a purpose? Maybe they had been told to stay put and watch for American airplanes or ships heading for the Coral Sea? Was this new guy an officer and could he have a small portable hand cranked generator? Had they been in contact with their ship all along? But how were they going to do that if he had dismembered his radio to get to the wire to sew up my leg? And was this new guy’s camp the source of my strange light?
A million ideas were running through my head. Anything was possible. But the one most plausible, the guy was from the sub. More than likely he volunteered to remove the wedge with a hammer and chisel and then couldn’t get back on board for some reason. Maybe he was marooned on purpose to stay with my friend as a lookout for something or other? Who knows? Maybe he didn’t want to get back on board? Maybe he figured to be eventually taken prisoner by the Americans? It is possible he knew the conditions were not good in Japan and didn’t care to continue the War?
I’m looking at things the way I see them and not the way he might. That’s the way we always looked on Orientals–inscrutable, impossible for us to understand what they were thinking.
Chapter 11
Two days later the two of them came walking down the beach waving a white flag. My friend had shown little respect for my armament, not until he saw it deployed against the two sailors in the lagoon. Now I guess he thought better and didn’t want to unnecessarily spook me with the presence of this other guy.
This second bird walked up to me as though we were old friends. He put out his hand, offering to shake mine. And then in perfect English, said, “how do you do. I’m glad to know you.”
Before I could respond, he smiled and said something to the affect that his presence must be a shock. He sat down in the sand by my water cistern and waited to be offered a cup.
I gave each of them a drink, served up in my hollowed out coconut cups, and waited for him to explain.
I didn’t have to wait long. In fact he loved to speak English and he obviously wanted to impress me. He was quick to tell me that he wanted to be taken prisoner, and that he ultimately wanted me to hand him over to the American military based on Fiji.
“Yes, I came from the submarine. And yes there was an admiral flying with our friend here who was going to meet Yamamoto when they were shot down.
“Now I am going to be treated as a deserter and shot if I am captured by my own people. I never want to return to Japan. I have nothing waiting for me there. In fact most of my life, I have had more in common with Americans than I have with my own people.
He went on to say: “My father was with the Japanese Legation in San Francisco until just before Pearl Harbor when my family moved back to Japan. I had been in the country for many years; in fact, I was studying engineering at Berkeley when my father had me shanghaied and taken back. He promised me I would be shot if I didn’t join the Japanese forces. I had no choice. I was given a commission and sent to sub school, where I was trained as a navigator. This navigator job was an additional duty; my main function was executive officer.
“I had a serious misunderstanding with my commanding officer in front of the crew. In order to save face, he ordered me to leave the boat and make it ready for sea. He planned to abandon me, it was written all over his face. The officers aboard understood and so did I. But I did not care. Everybody knew I had volunteered to fix the propeller, and they knew I would have to stay behind as a matter of honor for my indiscretion. In truth, I wanted to leave. If there were Americans here I wanted to be with them. I want to be an American again.
“My mother and sister were killed by your bombers last year. I do not hold it against you or your forces. I understand there was nothing else you could do after Pearl Harbor. So you see, my allegiance is to the American flag, I am out from under any promises made to my father….”
I interrupted him for the first time. I wasn’t interested in his personal problems or family history, not right now anyway. What I wanted to know was if there was a landing party on the island and if he figured the sub would come back.
“No,” he said, “No to both questions.” Then he waited for me to speak. He had been rude according to Japanese customs, by being so abrupt when after all he was technically a guest. He knew this but he wanted to impress me with his understanding of American customs. That is, by getting directly to the point.
“How did you get off the sub?”
“Two of us entered the aft torpedo room. The watertight door was closed; we had on diving suits with air tanks. When the pumps filled the compartment, equalizing the pressure it was easy to raise the hatch and slip out. The second man closed and locked the hatch cover. I guess the captain did not trust me to come back. If there had been no second man, and had I left the area after removing the wedge in the propeller, leaving the hatch open, he would have lost his boat and crew because he would have had the same problem with the aft hatch as he had with the forward.
“I would never have done such a thing, after all I had friends on board.”
“Why didn’t you come after us when we killed your three sailors?”
“Because we did not have time. And that precipitated another of our many arguments. He wanted to follow orders and report our position. I told him I knew Americans, and that you were smarter than he surmised. I told him you had broken our codes. I knew there were destroyers close in looking for us. I first told him this at the Battle of Midway. I knew then for sure you had broken our codes. It was just logical that you did. You could tell by the way things were shaping up. He was looking at it from a Japanese standpoint. I had no prejudices; in fact I always gave you the benefit of the doubt for having brains. After all I had met some pretty smart Americans. You were not anything like he figure
d you were.
“At any rate, he decided to leave here only when he had a full charge. He argued that we had changed our codes. I argued that you broke them again and would do so again and again. He told me this was preposterous. But that was not the only thing he held against me besides arguing with him, I mean. He told me I thought the way I did because I was an American. He also was looking at me through Japanese eyes and he considered me to be a traitor, put aboard his boat by politicians. He meant because of my father’s position in the government. He was afraid to say so but I know that is how he felt. Anyway he sent a message over my strong objections. That is what brought the destroyer upon us so fast.
“How many other officers do you estimate are in your service that were schooled in our universities?” I was curious. I had been told there were a great many of them.
“He said: I met more than a few, so there must have been hundreds if not thousands. They mostly came from west coast schools such as Cal Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA.”
I pressed on. I was getting a little hot under the collar but I wanted to know and here was my chance to separate fact from rumor on a number of things.
“What else did we do wrong?”
“Well, you shipped us thousands of tons of rolled steel from your southern mills and after your government closed that off, we bought thousands of tons more of scrap iron from private American sources. And it was good stuff too; we used it in our new armaments. My captain was fond of telling the crew what good steel you made. He did this after we survived every depth charge. He thought it was funny, and I guessed it was a morale builder for the crew.”
Among other things, I noticed he interjected some slang whenever it was appropriate. He thought I would be impressed with his Americanization and that I would see him as a friend if not a compatriot.
He went on: “Do you know where the design for our Mitsubishi fighter, the one you call the Zero came from.” He was off and running now he had my attention. I let him go as I began to seethe at our downright stupidity.
“It came from Howard Hughes. He had designed a truly good airplane; one he won all kinds of awards with. It was maneuverable and fast, and as it turned out it was superior to those you had in your military in many ways. He was so proud of it, he even invited some of our engineers to take a look. They did more than that. When they were left alone, which was frequently, they not only sketched it but also managed to get most of the specifications from your engineers. The ones who built it were as proud of it as was Hughes. They hurried back to Japan and lost no time in converting their drawings into a first class fighter. At the Battle for Guadalcanal you were humbled, when you came up against it for the first time. Then your leaders were mad as hell. When the word got around, Hughes was criticized and his company was embarrassed. We used that as a propaganda tool for our young people. The point was: even a small country could match, and then overcome a large industrial nation if they used their heads. Cunning, you see, was taught to be as important a commodity as was anything else. The name of the game was victory.
“But believe me when I tell you that I was not impressed. While we were spending time messing around with small items like fighter planes, you were working on something that was going to exterminate us all. That is one reason I am here and not on that sub headed for Japan. Time proved me right. You have built a giant bomber, and are using it to systematically burn down everyone of their cities, while we stubbornly stand by waiting for you to invade, so they can demonstrate their superiority with some more of those puny fighter planes.”
I didn’t overlook his reference to “Japan” instead of to “home.” He wanted me to see that his home was actually America and that once again, he was forced into living in and fighting for Japan. He of course figured from the beginning that they were going to lose. But if so, he was the only Jap at the time that did. Maybe Yamamoto had some misgivings. But none of them were officially voiced to the Emperor.
I hadn’t heard anything about a giant bomber. In fact I hadn’t heard anything about the War since Midway. And I never really knew how that turned out. I knew the Japanese had four large carriers and a fleet of surface ships and submarines, but I never knew what we had or how we had intended to use them. I just naturally surmised that we were going to screw things up and lose like we had every other engagement in the South Pacific.
I asked him about Midway. He told me we won and that Japanese forces broke off and headed back to Japan. He told me that Guadalcanal was taken, and our people had succeeded in building a large airstrip there. Furthermore, our forces had overrun several other islands to the north. But the big thing that was against us; we were tired and our equipment was worn out. Japanese intelligence was saying we were going to lose maybe a million men if we invaded the main island of Japan. To make his point, he said, while the Japanese navy recognized they had been beaten, their army air forces were intact. Also they had been pulling out many of their best navy pilots from combat, saving them for the big showdown. They expected to sue for peace after we had lost several of our own carriers and capital ships and a half million men.
It all sounded more than plausible to me, especially when you consider they have had time to stock-pile material, aircraft, and their army air forces had not really seen action yet. All we had by way of air power to support this invasion, according to him, was a few combat carrier fighters. Their army was still very anxious to engage us and their ground airplanes were new and in the hands of capable, tested pilots. And the big thing: they would be flying from close ground bases while we would be flying from the decks of carriers at sea. Everything on paper pointed to a coming stalemate in their favor. All they wanted in the first place was to be left alone to colonize Asia. They didn’t even care that much about the Philippines. He said they would be willing to concede them when they were called upon to do so.
I asked him his opinion about the advisability of attacking Pearl in the first place. He said he didn’t agree with it and neither did Yamamoto. He said it was a mistake, however, he didn’t believe our response would amount to much. He didn’t think we were going to have a major effect on what he called their Master Plan. Then for the next hour he held me spellbound with his account of what he called The Great East Asiatic Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The above document, according to my new friend, was conceived following a conference to outline future economic plans for the Far East. He said: “Baron Tanaka was supposed to have written it, whether he did or not is problematical. But it was accepted as the national war plan, because everything came to pass just as the author wrote it would. The only thing left to happen now is a stalemate, when the United States stops the War and concedes Japan’s stated position. But do not forget, my American friend,” he said; “everything in this coming cease-fire agreement will be for the benefit of the Empire of Japan.
“It was supposed to have been written as a briefing paper for the Emperor. But it was so close to the papers coming from the army’s graduate military schools that the army high command touted it as the nation’s master plan, and claimed it ranked along side our Monroe Doctrine. While it appears to be an economic plan to benefit all of Asia, it really is a subterfuge to enslave all of Asia under the heel of Imperial Japan.
“Somehow it became a consensus paper and was supposed to have been signed off and promoted by Premier Tojo, Togo, Yamamoto and General Yamashita among others. Whether it was or not is not the point, because although the Emperor did not sign it he was known to agree with it. He was so impressed; they began calling it The Tanaka Memorial.”
I asked him how come he knew so much about such a high level position paper.
He answered: “All officers who attended any of the graduate military schools, in vogue during the thirties had studied it. Because of my education, I was commissioned a Lt. Commander and sent to one of the more prestigious of these as part of my fast track indoctrination. It was here that I was introduced to this manifesto. Each of us was directed to write a thesis on ho
w we would go about making it happen. There were no limitations imposed on our thinking. Everything was open to discussion.
“With that as the main guideline, most students concentrated on a military approach to the problem of expansion. If the rest of the world, but mostly the United States, could not be convinced our expansion would be in the best interests of world order, then they would be forced to accept it on peril of being attacked buy our superior naval forces. Since this concept fit in with the prevailing thinking of the ranking military and industrialists it fast became the ‘school solution.’
“If a student’s work, being original as it was, agreed in principle, he was automatically given a high mark. But more than that, since most of the best young minds in the country agreed, then it must be accepted as the way to go. But there was one fatal flaw to all of this. To get there, Japan was going to have to compete with the United States. And they were seen as a serious competitor, in spite of the ocean that separated them from Asian markets.
“And if inveighing would not discourage them, then force would. That was the consensus, anyway. And it was supposed to convince those who had their doubts, as did the Emperor and men such as Admiral Yamamoto.
“With few exceptions, everybody at these schools came to the same conclusion: In order to discourage the United States, the fleet at Pearl Harbor must be destroyed. There was no other way. This position was also major in the thinking of those who ran the government and the military. And this was to happen without provocation and was to utilize the element of surprise without exception.”
“Do you mean a sneak attack?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way. But it would be planned to happen just hours after your state department was notified. This of course would not allow sufficient time to do much by way of defending your selves. But it would allow us to later say that you were notified, and Japan being an honorable nation, had satisfied all requirements according to the rules of society and warfare.”
Somewhere West of Fiji Page 12