From Yokohama, an hour by bus winding up into the hills brought us before dawn to the secret naval intelligence prison at Ofuna. There we were assigned to cells that contained grass mats and a blanket. Another prisoner brought us bowls of warm, lumpy rice, and compared to our brief experience at Kobe, the situation at Ofuna seemed good. At morning quarters we learned that we were captives, not prisoners, and as such could be put back into the sea; further, since this was not a work camp, our ration would be reduced by one-quarter. On the nicer side was word that we would start learning Japanese on the following day. Discounting the threats, the opportunity to learn a foreign language seemed a fair exchange. Please understand as I write further that neither I nor Tang’s other survivors were complaining about our lot, for we at least had a chance to live.
The titular head of the camp was a warrant officer called the Taichō. He was seldom seen except when he chose to make the nightly rounds. The real power lay in the Kangochō, or camp pharmacist, a sadistic, hulking man whose guards were misfits from the navy. Following morning quarters on our second day at Ofuna, the nine of us, who were the only prisoners on the west side of the divided compound, were marched through the gate to the other side. There, Lieutenant Commander J. A. Fitzgerald, skipper of our lost submarine Grenadier, and two others, all three walking skeletons, were called from the other prisoners’ ranks. We watched the largest guards, three at a time in rotation, club these men into unconsciousness while other guards held them up so the beatings could continue. Caverly was as tough as they come and had even been a professional boxer, but this sight made him vomit. We were marched off while the Kangochō continued kicking the limp bodies; erroneously, we believed them dead.
On indeterminate nights, sometimes under orders but at other times on their own, gangs of guards would roam the corridors to beat prisoners who had been singled out for “special” treatment and others whom they apparently simply disliked. Typical of the daytime punishments for trumped-up charges, and sometimes involving all hands, was the “Ofuna crouch,” in which prisoners were made to stand on the balls of their feet with knees half bent and arms raised above their heads while guards stood by to club individuals when they commenced falling after an hour or so.
The daily ration consisted of a bowl of barley in the morning and evening, about a cupful each, and soup at noon. This was made of hot water, a dash of soya sauce, and two or three slices of potatoes or some bean paste. Sometimes, for variety, leftovers would be combined to make “all dumpo” for supper. Fruit, meat, fish, or vegetables other than the potato slices were never provided. During the war crimes trials, this ration was adjudged to have averaged 300 calories per day, and this was actually a quarter less than the Japanese authorities had planned. From an inherently honest race, they did not even suspect that through bookkeeping and thievery, staples were being diverted before they reached the prisoners’ larder.
The object of the starvation, beatings, and continuous threat of them was, of course, to compel prisoners to reveal useful information. Fortunately, we knew nothing about our forces’ war plans. We from Tang were as well prepared as possible to endure this, in part because of the rigors we had had to surmount in surviving the sinking; but equally important was the layer of fat and the excellent health we brought from our ship. This led to our being given work assignments, even dipping privies, which gave us respite from the guards. When the first B-29s flew over Ofuna we were digging caves, and appropriately it was Thanksgiving time. During the following weeks, five submariners from H.M.S. Strategem and several U.S. airmen joined us, and somehow the wonderful Red Cross delivered the first of three food packages at Christmas. January brought ever increasing flights of B-29s, but also scurvy ulcers that would not heal.
There was no further work, so still in our tattered whites and with rags for shoes, although we were each allowed a blanket, we walked incessantly in the snow to keep warm and as an antidote for the creeping paralysis of beriberi.
Our conversations ranged from boyhood to shipboard just to keep our thoughts from our stomachs, and now having shared tasks we had never dreamed of, the barriers our differing ranks had imposed were steadily dropping away. I doubt that any skipper has ever learned more about his ship from the viewpoint of the troops than did I. The first disclosure, sort of a trial balloon, was the true depth reached while Tang was being hounded by the destroyer west of Saipan. In the pump room a sea-pressure gauge had actually passed 350 pounds per square inch, or 700 feet, before steadying, but the few who knew this decided to keep the information to themselves, and I believe they exercised good judgment.
Having taken that in stride, I next was informed that I had conducted too many inspections, but that is probably a complaint in any ship. Some time passed before I was privy to the most interesting information, the true source of the troops’ alcohol at the Royal. As Caverly described the radio shack still, I clearly recalled each element: the small fan mounted low on the after bulkhead, the Silex coffee maker secured in line, and the metal ring to hold a coffee mug as a receptacle. Even the condenser now registered, the transmitter’s output coil fitted with rubber stoppers and with pin jacks drilled. I had seen it in the transmitter on inspections but suspected nothing.
“Skipper, you officers must have been snoof,” Caverly observed, borrowing that word from Dickens, I believe. “If you knew how many times we burned our fingers in getting that damned coil from the Silex to the wastebasket, always expecting you to smell the stuff!” he exclaimed.
With a ready source of denatured torpedo alcohol from the storage tanks, this had certainly been a neater solution than the home brew. The output must have been drop by drop, but I could see that a tin or so could readily have been accumulated on even a shortened patrol. Well, the troops had left sex behind when we passed through the Golden Gate, but that was just about all. If this product had helped in getting them back into fighting trim, then perhaps Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels had erred when he made our navy dry.
In February we witnessed the grandest show yet, a great carrier air strike, which signified to us that the Philippines were secure, for otherwise our carriers could not be this far north. As before, a glance to the skies meant a beating from the guards, but the sight of torpedo bombers just yards away was worth it. Sadly, more airmen arrived, all of whom were kept in solitary confinement. Mess cooking at the time, I could only place the food inside the cell of an airman who had broken arms and could not feed himself. My request that one of us be allowed to feed him brought knuckle sandwiches; I was removed from mess cooking and do not know his fate.
In the spring those of us from Tang were still strong on our feet, though the beriberi was becoming very serious. Two prisoners on each side of the compound who could no longer walk had quickly died, and another three on our side were stumbling. Naval intelligence had obviously expected that the physical terror and the starvation diet would break men down, but that the food would be sufficient until the prisoners were transferred to registered camps. They had miscalculated and now took alarm, giving us all shots in an attempt to stop the continuing dysentery and substituting bread for the barley, for they would be unable to transfer prisoners who could not work. The remedies had no effect, so they sent Major Gregory (Pappy) Boyington, from across the wall, with a draft that included all of Tang’s enlisted men on to the large army POW camp on Omori, a causeway-connected island near Yokohama. Two months later Hank, Larry, and I joined them.
Mentally, the change to Omori was like surfacing after an all-day dive, for the 500 prisoners made it impossible for the guards to single out individuals. Rice was a welcome change, and so was the soup if we kept our eyes off its weird-looking contents. At least it provided sufficient nourishment for the reasonable work of stacking sheet metal and roof tiles in the area across the causeway, which was burned flat as far as we could see. The task had an unexpected benefit, for civilians would hide handfuls of roasted soybeans where we might find them. Once our guard caught a man doin
g this and brutally whipped him in the face with a pair of pliers. Only then did we realize the true depth of the civilians’ kindness and their hate for the military.
With invasion apparently imminent, our work was changed to digging great caves for the storage of staples and as bomb shelters. Thirty of us had been detailed for this daylight-to-dark work, but by the end of the second week only ten of us could even walk the six miles to the site. Boats had hepatitis; gyp corn, which is normally a hog feed, had replaced the rice; but just when everything seemed its darkest, Emperor Hirohito’s voice came over the 1MC at the work site. We understood one key expression—“The war is over.” It was August 15, 1945.
On the news, the Japanese slaughtered an old horse at Omori and carted it with them as they went over the hill. But our resourceful cooks scrubbed out the intestines, chopped them up, and we had gyp corn-horse gut “all dumpo” to celebrate the victory. Within days, B-29s started raining assorted canned goods till Omori looked like a giant salad.
Another change took place while we awaited evacuation; Boats was on the mend, but now I had his recent symptoms, and we suspected that the culprit was the single needle used for everyone at Ofuna. It was August 28, 1945, when Captain Harold Stassen’s destroyer division anchored off Omori at dusk. He came ashore to make arrangements for the following day, but after taking one look he called away all boats, and evacuation started immediately. We all weighed in the 90s, but my high temperature sent me to isolation. For some of us it was a long and trying voyage home, but once there our recovery was complete. Best of all, our prayers had been answered and we found our families and loved ones fine.
Trukke and Dasilva settled in Los Angeles; Decker returned to Denver and Narowanski to New Jersey. Although there was no assurance that we would return to submarines, the rest of us chose continuing naval careers. But at sea or ashore, none of us would ever take our wonderful land with all of its freedoms for granted.
Appendices
Citations and Decorations
On January 24, 1946, President Harry Truman awarded Tang the Second Presidential Unit Citation, for her fourth and fifth patrols; all of her patrols had thus been cited by our presidents. Tang joined Guardfish, the only other submarine to receive two such citations, and became one of only three ships in the U.S. Navy so honored. Affecting me personally were orders to Washington in March of 1946. On a day most certainly filled with pride though tempered by sadness, I received the Congressional Medal of Honor from the president for my actions in attacking the last two convoys. Now I could recommend further awards.
An early inquiry at the Department of the Navy disclosed that all of the citations I had recommended at the end of our fourth patrol had been approved and forwarded to those individuals who had been transferred or to our next of kin. But not until the writing of this account did I learn that the recommendation that I receive the Medal of Honor was originally made in early March of 1945. It seems likely that intelligence had gleaned some information concerning Tang’s attacks in the Formosa Strait, but the Secretary of the Navy considered the citation too general and directed that it be resubmitted after the close of hostilities, when more specific information might be available. However, the subordinate awards based on this recommendation for the Medal of Honor had clear sailing at that time since they did not go via the secretary’s office. I believe I see Fraz’s hand in the selections of the men to receive these decorations, but knowing none of this at the time, I made my own selections in 1946. It seems that Fraz and I still made a good team; there were no duplications and all recommendations were honored.
Frank Springer and Larry Savadkin each received the Navy Cross. Silver Star medals were awarded to Ed Beaumont, Floyd Caverly, James Culp, Jesse Dasilva, Clayton Decker, Mel Enos, Lawrence Ericksen, Hank Flanagan, John Heubeck, Dick Kroth, Paul Larson, William Leibold, Pete Narowanski, John Parker, Basil Pearce, Hayes Trukke, Leland Weekley, James White, Paul Wines, and George Zofcin. A Bronze Star was awarded to Marvin De Lapp, and Charles Andriolo received the Secretary of the Navy’s Letter of Commendation.
If there had been any possible doubt, these citations added to those of the previous patrols and the two Presidential Unit Citations moved Tang far to the front of the submarine force in total awards, and quite possibly ahead of all other ships. Sadly, so many of her men could not share in the accolade of their countrymen, but down through history this has so often been the case.
Postwar Comparison
In Washington, the Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC) of the Strategic Bombing Survey had already begun the thankless, and in many ways impossible task of trying to verify and assign to the rightful force and unit each ship sunk in the war against Japan. In so many cases, verification was quite impossible, for there were no survivors or Japanese witnesses. The Empire convoy system of point-to-point protection about promontories and along dangerous beaches required only landline and short-range tactical radio. This accounts for the complete lack of Ultras concerning any shipping about the Empire and for the meager Japanese records of other individual ship positions.
The JANAC report was finally published in 1947. From that time on, ComSubPac had no option but to accept, at least publicly, the official findings. The reductions in accredited sinkings brought on official explanations pointing to the difficulties of identification, poor visibility, and night actions, which could affect the submarines’ reports, but never questioning JANAC’s infallibility. In simple truth, it was impossible to correlate and verify each attack and sinking without accurate records on both sides. Submarine data was exact. At the shorter ranges, the required visual evidence was positive and usually confirmed by many witnesses for all reported sinkings.
But the war was over, and boats that had sunk a goodly number of ships, now with new commanding officers, shrugged off the ships not credited. In the case of some boats who had joined the enemy but months before V-J Day, it was quite a different matter. Ships had become increasingly hard to find, and the high ratio of escorts made sinkings difficult. To have these submarines stricken entirely from the pages of history by a Washington report did not sit well, especially with their wartime crews.
Tang probably fared as well as any other submarine, but the committee seemed to delight in disallowing the very ships for which she had worked the hardest and for which she had been placed in the greatest jeopardy. On the first patrol all or similar ships were credited except the large naval tanker west of Saipan. In her stead was the 1,794-ton cargo ship Choko Maru, about the size of Tang herself. CinCPac intelligence certainly had information of the naval tanker, for it had supplied the information for the first Ultra and then again for the message concerning the dawn change of base course. Unfortunately, Ultras remained secret and could not be mentioned in confidential patrol reports. It seems likely that through clerical error a zero had been dropped from our estimate of tonnage, and the committee’s staff then found obscurely listed in ONI-208J the Choko Maru, which fitted the figure and had been listed as missing by the Japanese. But surely Tang saw no such ship.
The JANAC report had no statistics for rescued naval aviators, so Tang’s rescues at Truk during her second patrol were not mentioned. But it is satisfying to know that every airman who survived the crash of his plane was rescued. History also shows that Tang’s contact report on the RO class submarine, which she nearly torpedoed and possibly vice versa, led to an attack by the destroyers MacDonough and Stephen Potter and aircraft from the Monterey, which were credited with sinking the RO-45.
On the fourth patrol, neither the gunboat at anchor in Owashi Wan nor the new engine-aft tanker so close inshore at Nigishima Saki was credited, and similarly the escort that blew to smithereens. There were no survivors or Japanese witnesses to the gunboat’s demise, which undoubtedly accounts for her omission. In the case of the tanker and escort, a typographical error in the patrol report listed the longitude as 136° 18′ east instead of 136° 13′ east, or five miles up the coast, and cost Tang this credit. Si
milar small errors undoubtedly affected the credits to other submarines as well.
In the last patrol, lacking specific latitudes and longitudes, which were lost with Tang’s records, the committee appears to have assigned ships to her at random. Perhaps it did not have a Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire and its charts did not show the key positions of Puki Kaku, Pakusa Point, nor Turnabout and Oksu islands. In place of the first two major ships sunk near Pakusa Point, Tang was credited with sinking the Joshu Go of 1,658 tons and the Oita Maru of 711 tons in a location north of Formosa where Tang had never been. Since there were no survivors of either ship sunk by Tang nor symbols on the postwar hydrographic chart of the strait showing wrecks in these areas, it is presumed that the Japanese did not know where the ships were sunk.
Three ships of the convoy of October 23 were allowed, but only two ships of the last convoy. The antiaircraft fire from the escorts indicated that they believed planes were also involved in the latter attack. Since escorts continued to search for survivors throughout the night and most of the following day, there must certainly have been ample witnesses to the sinkings and to the bow section of the last ship, which remained sticking straight up some 40 or 50 feet into the air.
On the postwar hydrographic chart of the strait and lying north of the Pescadores are 44 symbols, each of them representing one or more sunken ships. It is interesting to note that the four submarines that made forays into the area before Tang and the three-submarine wolf pack that followed her in January of 1945 were credited with a grand total of only seven of the represented ships. Perhaps Tang is fortunate to have been credited with a like number, though we had once heard an official of Japanese naval intelligence describe October losses to submarines in the strait as “very many.”
Clear the Bridge! Page 53