by Don Keith
In 1944, with the railway project completed, the Japanese decided to take the healthiest of the POWs—and those were obvious since they were the ones who had managed to survive the hellish ordeal—and ship them to Japan. There they were destined to work in the copper mines and in other areas where labor was in short supply.
The prisoners were well aware that they were going to pass through waters that were heavily patrolled by U.S. submarines. They also knew that the Japanese had a habit of not marking noncombatant vessels with crosses or other indicators. It was also true that in many cases and for their own reasons the Japanese did not bother to request safe passage for such ships, as they had every right to do under the rules of the Geneva Convention.
Some of the prisoners formed “rescue” teams and gave each other assignments of what to do in case they came under attack and were sunk. They hoarded rations and prepared primitive survival kits, just in case they found themselves in the water for a long period of time. They openly talked about which fate would be worse, having the ship shot from beneath them or being forced to do slave labor in the Japanese copper mines for the remainder of the war, or until they perished like so many of their comrades had done.
On September 9, the Pampanito and her sisters were instructed to rendezvous and prepare to locate and engage an approaching convoy. A message intercepted and decoded by intelligence spoke of a large group of vessels carrying raw materials that was quickly approaching their portion of the sea. Another wolf pack was ordered to the area to act as backup.
When all three submarines in Ben’s Busters arrived late the night of the eleventh, they exchanged recognition signals and pulled closer to each other to discuss tactics for inflicting the most damage on the enemy ships. Then, with the sky overcast, the sea calm, and rain squalls on the distant horizon, they sat and waited to see if the intelligence proved to be accurate.
At one thirty the next morning, the first blips appeared on the Pampanito ’s circling radar screen.
“Range fifteen miles,” the radar tech reported, the calculated calm masking the excitement in his voice.
As planned, the Pampanito went to flank speed and quickly maneuvered to where the convoy was headed, ready to attack. The Growler, with Captain Oakley on the bridge, came at the group of ships from the west, firing on them with his deck guns. That sent the escort vessels fanning out in all directions, assuming an attack was coming at them from several different directions.
One of the destroyers spotted the Growler on radar and steered hard in her direction. Normal procedure would have been for Oakley to immediately take his boat deep, to run, to hide until he could sneak back into range for an attack. But the skipper stayed topside, facing bow-to-bow with the oncoming warship. At a range of just over a thousand yards—near point-blank but staring head-on into the warship’s bow—the Growler unleashed three torpedoes at the oncoming destroyer. The first one hit, setting off a violent explosion, a concussion those on the bridge of the attacking submarine easily felt. And when the burning vessel limped past the sub, Oakley could feel the heat of the flames. The destroyer sank quickly, less than two hundred yards from where her killer bounced on the rolling waves.
Oakley’s daring and unorthodox down-the-throat attack quickly became legend in the submarine service, even as others criticized the unecessary danger in which he had placed his boat and crew. Regardless, with that successful move, the Growler was still in the hunt, and one destroyer escort was scratched from the battle. Oakley and his boat were not slinking off somewhere to wait and try to launch an attack later. She was on the surface still, ready to fight. She went on to quickly damage two other ships before she had to withdraw from the fray long enough to reload her tubes.
Meanwhile, the Pampanito moved to the dark side of the convoy, trying to avoid becoming an easy-to-spot silhouette against the illumination of a newly risen full moon. In the process, the Japanese ships, already scattered in response to the Growler’s brazen attack, ran away, out of their torpedo range. The backup submarines were still eighty miles north, so far unaware of the battle that had begun. Summers and his pack mate worked to catch up and gain a good shooting angle, trying to keep the bulk of the convoy within radar range if not within sight from the bridge. They ran on the surface so they would have some hope of catching the fleeing targets, using the darkness to hide them as much as the moonlight would allow.
The Pampanito and the Sealion tracked the convoy for the balance of the night.
Then, just before the first rays of the morning sun appeared on the horizon, Summers and his hardworking crew found themselves in the perfect position to launch torpedoes at the zigzagging ships.
Suddenly the submarine was shaken hard by a terrible explosion. Then there was another, even closer and more stunning.
At first, everyone aboard the Pampanito thought they were under attack, either from aircraft bombs or shells from one of the convoy’s escorts. Or they had gotten themselves into a minefield. Neither one would be a good thing.
It took a quick, instinctive swing of the periscope in the direction of the sea-rending blast to determine that the Sealion had already fired two salvos of torpedoes at the convoy. The first hit a tanker, and that target was already riding low in the water from the weight of her full load of oil. The brilliant flames made the sea around the doomed tanker brighter than daylight, clearly illuminating a second vessel that had been struck by the second spray of the Sealion’s torpedoes.
The explosions that had rocked the Pampanito were those blasts, the Sealion’s direct hits, so close, so powerful, that Summers and his crew thought they were shells striking their own boat.
That second target the Sealion had blasted was a freighter-transport named the Rakuyo Maru. Its cargo was raw rubber. Raw rubber and thirteen hundred surviving prisoners of war, the men who survived building the Railway of Death and were now bound for the copper mines in Japan.
Two of the Sealion’s three-torpedo salvo hit the vessel, one at the bow, the other about the midpoint of the ship. She was mortally wounded, doomed.
From his periscope, Captain Paul Summers could see men jumping from the burning, sinking vessel. Others were desperately lowering the ship’s lifeboats, all escaping to the sea in the hopes that the escort craft would be able to pick them up.
Of course, Paul Summers had no way of knowing that the men jumping overboard were the Japanese guards, the men who were supposed to be overseeing the prisoners. They also took most of the lifeboats as they fled the dying transport.
The Sealion had already gone deep to get away from the inevitable depth charging. It did not take long before the explosives were going off all around her and she pointed her nose deeper, as far down as she dared go.
The Pampanito and the Growler had no reason to stand by and watch the two stricken ships sink. Nor did they have any reason to try to pluck enemy survivors out of the water. Of course, they still had no idea there were POWs among them.
The sub skippers had a job to do. Without hesitation, they turned their sterns to the mess their sister boat had made and were off in chase of what remained of the fleeing convoy. There were other targets to eliminate.
The Growler quickly caught one of the escort ships and sent it to the bottom, the explosions of her torpedoes causing concussive ripples across the expanse of the sea as the rising sun painted the scene an eerie orange.
The Pampanito plowed on, looking for something for her own torpedomen to shoot at.
Meanwhile, back aboard the heavily listing Rakuyo Maru, with no guards watching over them, the POWs who had survived the explosions and fire went desperately rummaging about, looking for anything they could lash together to make rafts, gathering up food and water, getting ready for what could be a long time in the water after their ship inevitably sank beneath them.
It would take the transport almost twelve hours to finally go under.
Other POWs were already in the water. Some were thrown overboard by the explosions, others had jum
ped at the first opportunity to escape the withering fires. All were clinging to anything they could find that would help keep them afloat. Tragically, many of them would die from the shock waves from the vicious nearby depth charges, the continuing attack on the Sealion. Others would be killed by the blasts from the escort warship that had been hit by the Growler.
Still unaware of the POWs and their awful predicament, the Pampanito tracked the bulk of the remaining ships in the convoy. As soon as darkness offered its cover once again, Summers and his crew launched a surprise attack.
“Hot run in number four!” came the sharp cry from the forward torpedo room.
“Aye, hot run in number four,” acknowledged the torpedo officer, with as much calm as he could muster.
A torpedo had become stuck in the tube, its nose hard against the jammed door. That kept it from swimming away, even as the torpedo’s engine ran at full speed, butting its nose against the impediment. It wouldn’t be armed yet. It took several hundred feet of run in the open sea to get it to the point that it would be ready to explode upon contact with something solid. Still, these particular fish were known to be extremely temperamental. It was highly possible that the hot run could explode right there in the number-four tube.
The truth was, though, that there was little they could do at the moment about the balky weapon. And there were plenty of targets still swimming around out there. Swinging around to draw a bead on several of the vessels, trying not to think about the explosive power that was hemmed up in number four like a ticking time bomb, the sub released a total of nine torpedoes over the next few minutes—all she had to fire.
Nine torpedoes swimming away toward their quarry. All but two of them struck targets.
In all, three vessels were damaged. Two of them were clearly done for. A third was claimed as a kill but was later disallowed.
One of the dying targets was a big transport with an unusual history. It was a ship originally built in the United States as the Wolverine State, a passenger ship. She had been carrying passengers off the China coast when she was captured by the Japanese and renamed the Kachidoki Maru. She was used as a troop transport and cargo vessel, primarily carrying raw materials and soldiers between various points of the Pacific Rim and Japan.
On this voyage, the ship also carried nine hundred British and Australian prisoners of war.
Cheers rang out up and down the length of the Pampanito as the skipper reported the solid hits against the enemy. The thunderous explosions and sounds of vessels breaking up as seawater rushed into their holds confirmed his update.
They then decided not to launch any more torpedoes, even when a couple of smaller vessels appeared and began picking up survivors from the teeming sea. Summers backed away from all the destruction he and his gang had set loose and finally gave attention to the lethal weapon that was still stubbornly lodged in the tube up front. They were finally able to eject the sticky torpedo and reload all tubes, just in case something else interesting came swimming by. Flushed by the success of this attack, they were ready to do more damage.
The crew did get a quick shot at a destroyer later in the day, but the quicker surface ship avoided their torpedoes and steamed on. Then the fun was over. It was time to go meet up with the rest of the wolf pack and compare notes on their wonderfully successful assault.
The next day, the Pampanito returned to the general area where the attacks on the convoy had taken place, hoping to run into a straggler or two and finish them off. On the afternoon of September 14, after diving deep to avoid contact with an enemy aircraft that did not seem to want to go away, Summers finally brought his boat to the surface in the midst of a nasty batch of debris and thick sludge oil. Wreckage floated all about them, the remnants of the mayhem their wolf pack had unleashed.
The skipper later noted in his log what else they found there:1605: A bridge lookout sighted some men on a raft, so stood by small arms, and closed to investigate.
1634: The men were covered with oil and filth and we could not make them out. . . . They were shouting but we couldn’t understand what they were saying, except made out words “Pick us up please.” Called rescue party on deck and took them off the raft. There were about fifteen (15) British and Australian Prisoner of War survivors on this raft from a ship sunk the night of 11-12 September 1944. We learned they were enroute from Singapore to Formosa and that there were over thirteen hundred on the sunken ship.
They were survivors of the Sealion’s attack on the Rakuyo Maru. They were a ragged bunch. After four days floating on the lashed-together makeshift raft, the men were hungry, thirsty, weak from exposure, and covered from head to foot with thick oil.
As soon as he got the story from the survivors, Captain Summers radioed the Sealion and told them what they had found. Both subs immediately began lifesaving measures, trying to pick up as many of the men as they could find while keeping a wary eye out for trouble.
Summers later recorded:1634: As men were received on board, we stripped them and removed most of the heavy coating of oil and muck. We cleared the after torpedo room and passed them below as quickly as possible. Gave all men a piece of cloth moistened with water to suck on. All of them were exhausted after four days on the raft and three years imprisonment. Many had lashed themselves to their makeshift rafts, which were slick with grease; and had nothing but lifebelts with them. All showed signs of pellagra, beriberi, immersion, salt water sores, ringworm, malaria etc. All were very thin and showed the results of undernourishment. Some were in very bad shape. . . . A pitiful sight none of us will ever forget. All hands turned to with a will and the men were cared for as rapidly as possible.
1701: Sent message asking Sealion for help.
1712: Picked up a second raft with about nine men aboard. . . .
1721: Picked up another six men.
1730: Rescued another six men.
1753: Picked up about eleven men. . . .
1824: . . . about six men.
1832: . . . about five men . . .
1957: Light fading rapidly as we picked up a single survivor.
2005: Completely dark as we took aboard the last group of about ten men. Had made a thorough search of our vicinity with high periscope and kept true bearings of all rafts sighted. Felt we had everyone in sight and knew we had all we could care for if not more. When finally we obtained an exact count the number of survivors on board was 73. These together with 79 members of our crew plus 10 officers make us “a little cramped for living space.”
2015: Made final search and finding no one else set course for Saipan at four engine speed.
Much of the rescue effort was recorded on movie film, using the boat’s 16-millimeter camera. That footage has survived. In those pictures, we can see volunteer teams of crewmen pulling the oil-covered men aboard, even as lookouts kept an eye on the sky and radar scanned for incoming aircraft. Word would have been passed to the Japanese headquarters about the attack on the convoy and aircraft were almost a certainty.
Still the crewmen from the submarines did all they could do, throwing lines to drifting rafts, pulling them close enough to the submarine to help the men aboard. Some of the sub sailors jumped into the water to get to victims, knowing that if the sub had to suddenly duck under the surface to avoid aircraft or patrol vessels, they would be stranded there. Stranded along with the men they were attempting to rescue. A submarine on the surface in daylight is a luscious target to enemy aircraft, so the skipper would have no choice but to dive.
Any of the men working on deck would have been left behind, too, if the need to dive occurred. It took less than a minute from the order to dive and the sounding of the klaxon for the boat to be under. Anyone not in the shears or on the bridge when the order came had no hope of getting belowdecks before the hatch was closed.
No matter. The submariners knew they had to do whatever they could to rescue as many of the POWs as possible. They ignored the risk and did their jobs and tried not to think about what might happen if an ai
rcraft suddenly popped up on the boat’s radar screen.
Captain Summers sent a radio message requesting that any other vessels in the area be sent as quickly as possible to continue the rescue. Several submarines broke off pursuit of another enemy convoy to rush to the area to help. Several dozen more men were plucked from the sea before a typhoon blew in, ending the effort and sealing the fate of the other POWs who had somehow survived the sinkings until that point.
In all and according to the best count available, over twenty-two hundred POWs were aboard the two transports that were sunk by the Sealion and the Pampanito. Those two boats and two of their sisters, the Queenfish (SS-393) and the Barb (SS-220), pulled about 160 men out of the oily waters. After the war, IJN records indicated that the Japanese rescued about 140 POWs for a total of about 300 of them who were saved. The Japanese were much more successful in getting to the survivors of the ship that was sunk by Summers and the Pampanito. Of the 900 men on that ship, about 660 were pulled aboard Japanese vessels and taken on to work camps, as originally intended. After the war, over 500 of them—all who survived the work camps—were liberated by American troops.
The nearest safe harbor to the Pampanito’s position was the island of Saipan, five days away, provided they could get a decent amount of time to run on the surface. Men were sleeping everywhere on the submarine, even on the empty torpedo skids. Food supplies were limited, too, but they somehow made do, including the submariners, who, for once, silenced their usual good-natured grousing.