by Mark Felton
Unlike the Type-B1 submarine utilized by the Japanese in patrolling the American west coast in 1941–42, the Type-C1 was not fitted with a reconnaissance aircraft. Armed with a total of twenty torpedoes, eight torpedo tubes were arranged in the bow, served via two separate torpedo rooms located one above the other. The type also mounted a 140mm (5.5-inch) deck-gun, and a rather inadequate single .50 cal. machine gun for anti-aircraft defence. One hundred and one men were required to crew each Type-Cl submarine, a huge complement for a submarine of the era and once again not matched or surpassed until the nuclear age.
As the I-22 crept closer to Oahu, Sasaki watched the coastline intently, but little stirred ashore in the darkness. A few lights were visible and an occasional searchlight beam punched out into the night sky. Sasaki’s confidence soared, and he began to believe that the boys of the Special Attack Force really would be successful and prove the value of their training and their innovative new equipment. As the five midget submarines and the ten hand-picked officers and seamen prepared to strike at the mighty American fleet resting at anchor, Sasaki had ‘…a feeling of confidence and a renewed hope that the attack would be successful’.4 The I-24’s midget developed a further problem, this time a malfunctioning gyro-compass, a vital piece of equipment without which navigation would have been almost impossible. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, the midget’s commander, and Petty Officer Second Class Kiyoshi Inagaki, the crewman, worked feverishly to correct the problem and insisted that their mission should go ahead even if the compass was not fixed in time, demonstrating both their eagerness to complete a mission they had spent months training for, and a willingness to disregard their own lives in the process. Commander Hiroshi Hanabusa, skipper of the I-24, reluctantly agreed to this request, not overly keen to send men on one-way missions, because as an experienced seaman he knew full well that the chances of Sakamaki and Inagaki returning from the mission would be remote with such faulty equipment to contend with.
As the sun slowly set on Saturday, 6 December 1941, the five Japanese mother submarines had assumed their midget launch positions approximately eight miles south of the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The radio operators aboard were periodically picking up Hawaiian music from the shore that echoed eerily through the boats as men moved about making last minute adjustments to their equipment, and officers peered intently through periscopes at the darkened land before them. Slightly after midnight the I-16 began the launch of Sub-Lieutenant Masaharu Yokoyama, aged twenty-two, and his midget. After the launch the I-16 was to proceed to the second, and some would have argued even then, rather unrealistic stage, of the flotilla battle plan: to await the return of the midgets from their attacks on Pearl Harbor. The five big submarines would position themselves seven miles west of Lanai Island, which itself is eighty miles east of Pearl Harbor. There the plan called for them to wait for two days before departing the area. When (if) the midget submarines managed to locate a mother submarine at this location, the midget’s crew was to be recovered and the Type-A then scuttled. Because the mother submarines would fan out off Lanai Island, more than one midget might rendezvous with the same submarine, so it was decided that recovery of the Type-As was impractical. The exhausted but hopefully victorious crews would have priority, as the equipment could be replaced. All of this was rather academic, as many officers and men aboard both the mother submarines and midgets knew, for the midget crews had already made their peace with God, and were prepared to sell their lives for the sake of the Emperor.
Yokoyama and his crewman, Petty Officer Second Class Sadamu Ueda, had already made their preparations for what they believed to be their final voyage. Should they be killed they would become ‘War Gods’, venerated at the Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo. They could take satisfaction that if they died the Emperor himself would visit the shrine each year to pay his respects and pray for their souls. Religious rites had been conducted aboard the submarine, prayers said, and final farewell letters penned to their families back in Japan, the men enclosing locks of hair and fingernail clippings so that their families would have something physical to cremate should they perish. Both men had dressed in clean uniforms, as Shinto rites dictated, and with souls and bodies purified they had clambered up into their midget submarine from inside the I-16. The telephone link between the midget and the mother submarine was disconnected and at 12.42 a.m. on Sunday, 7 December, the midget lifted off under the water and departed for war.
Aboard the command submarine I-22 Lieutenant Iwasa, leader of the midget submarine group once they had left the mother ships, and his crewmen, Petty Officer First Class Naokichi Sasaki, clambered aboard their vessel. Both men carried family swords strapped to their backs in white cloth sashes. Just before Iwasa disappeared up the ladder into the Type-A he briefly addressed the crew of the I-22. He was full of gratitude for their assistance in getting him and Sasaki to the target area: ‘Our work begins now. Believing in divine help, we are about to depart to do our utmost to fulfil our final task so as not to betray your trust and expectation in us,’ he said, adding, ‘I pray for the future successful battles of I-22. Farewell.’5 Iwasa bowed to the crew, who returned his salute, and then was sealed inside the midget. Grasping the inter-submarine telephone, Sasaki spoke to Iwasa for the final time before the midget departed. ‘Congratulations in advance on your success’, he said, ‘I hope you will do your job well. Good luck!’ Iwasa thanked his commanding officer for bringing all of them this far, and his final words indicated his acceptance of the nature of the coming mission when he said, ‘I wish you [Sasaki] to look after my private affairs.’6 With the final farewells said the midget was released into the open sea at 1.15 a.m. The I-22’s crew faced the direction the midget had sailed and saluted in silence. It was now a waiting game, waiting for news of a series of successful attacks made by the men they had come to know during the journey across the Pacific, and a period of waiting for their triumphant return, however remote that possibility appeared.
A similar scene to that being played out aboard the I-22 had just concluded aboard the I-18, as Sub-Lieutenant Shigemi Furuno and Petty Officer First Class Shigenori Yokoyama lifted off and motored towards Pearl Harbor. Next to depart was Ensign Akira Hiro-o and Petty Officer Second Class Yoshio Katayama from the I-20. Aboard the I-24, the midget’s defective gyro-compass was still not functioning properly, so Sakamaki determined to navigate towards Pearl Harbor at periscope depth instead, navigating by eye. It was a suicidal decision, but both men were determined not to be left behind kicking their heels while their comrades made history. They were the last midget to depart, and lifted off at 3.33 a.m. The loss of the gyro-compass was soon keenly felt by Sakamaki, as he vainly tried to hold the submarine on a course for the harbour by taking regular periscope readings, but the midget floundered about, taking a long time to edge towards his objective as the dawn fast approached. All of the midgets were supposed to penetrate the entrance to the harbour before daybreak, and be in position to time their attacks with those of the carrier task force aircraft. This became increasingly remote for Sakamaki and his submarine as the slow progress meant he would arrive at the entrance to Pearl Harbor after the other midgets, and the American base would be fully alert to a Japanese presence.
The first line of defence that the five Japanese midget submarines would encounter, and have to slip by unnoticed if they had a chance of penetrating the harbour, were three American minesweepers, the USS Crossbill, Condor and Reedbird. Their job was to patrol the harbour approaches, and a First World War-vintage destroyer located behind them supported them in this task. The USS Ward had been launched during the middle of 1918, though she had not seen any action during the earlier conflict. In fact, the Ward had never fired her guns in anger, and after the First World War the vessel had been mothballed and placed in reserve at San Diego until called up for service in early 1941. Commissioned back into service, and assigned to the US Pacific Fleet as a harbour defence and patrol vessel, she was placed under the command of thirty-five year old Lieuten
ant William Outerbridge. At 3.57 a.m. the Condor reported sighting what appeared to be a small submarine periscope about two miles outside of the harbour buoy, and the Ward motored over to assist in a thorough search. The Ward conducted a sonar search but turned up no contacts, and after ninety minutes gave up and returned to her original patrol sector.
The next line of defence designed to prevent unauthorized penetration of Pearl Harbor was an anti-submarine and boat net stretched across the harbour mouth. Sections of this net could be opened to permit the passage of vessels into and out of the harbour, and it was the job of the patrol vessels to monitor who was coming and going. Around 5 a.m. the patrol boats Condor and Crossbill headed into the harbour through a gate that was opened for them. The gate was left open as the USS Antares, a navy repair ship towing an empty steel barge, was expected to pass through shortly afterwards. Sub-Lieutenant Yokoyama, aboard the I-16’s midget, saw his chance and decided to follow the Antares through the gate, hopefully fooling the sentinels on watch. Lookouts aboard the Ward watched the Antares pass in front of their vessel as she made her way towards the gate. Something, however, caught their attention, for their appeared to be an object moving in the water between the repair ship and the barge. After some animated discussions aboard the Ward, it was concluded that the object was most probably a loose buoy. Pearl Harbor had received many submarine sightings over the past year, all of which had turned out to be false alarms, and no one was in the mood for jumping to conclusions just yet. The sun was up by now, and the officers and lookouts took up their binoculars and trained them on the object in the water for a closer look. The ‘buoy’ appeared to be travelling at about 5 knots, and no one knew of an inanimate navigational marker doing this before. Lieutenant Outerbridge faced a dilemma: perhaps the object was some kind of new secret weapon being developed by the US Navy, and if he fired on it the consequences for him could have been dire. However, he had not been informed by 14th Naval District to expect any such activity in his sector, and the object was, after all, inside the restricted zone. Having made up his mind to attack the object, Outerbridge ordered the guns manned and the men to battle stations. By now seamen aboard both the Ward and the Antares were reporting that the object looked much less like a buoy, and much more like a small submarine conning tower cutting the surface of the water like a shark’s dorsal fin. A Catalina flying boat circling overhead had also taken an interest in the object, and dropped some smoke bombs to mark its position for the warships.
At 6.45 a.m. the Ward opened fire, the first shot from its No. 1 gun sailing over the little conning tower to land in the sea beyond. At this point the midget submarine was seen to noticeably increase speed, the commander evidently attempting to charge the open gate in the net and get inside the harbour. Shot number two from the Ward decided the issue, however, as the round ploughed into the base of the conning tower, but did not explode. The midget immediately heeled over violently and started to sink. Outerbridge decided to make sure and passed alongside the foundering submarine, four depth charges rolling off the back of the destroyer. The detonations finished the Japanese submarine, and she disappeared rapidly into the disturbed sea. The Ward now signalled to shore a message for the attention of Rear-Admiral Claude C. Bloch, Commandant of the 14th Naval District, and responsible for the Pearl Harbor base and facilities: ‘We have dropped depth charges upon sub operating in defensive area.’ Theoretically, such a message should have set alarm bells ringing all over Pearl Harbor that something was amiss, but when the first message was received (a second followed a couple of minutes later) at the Harbor Control Post at 6.51 a.m., getting the signals sent up the chain of command quickly proved difficult. A twenty-minute delayed ensued while the messages were decoded and re-sent, and because it was very early on Sunday morning only skeleton crews were manning the communication equipment anyway. The duty officer in charge of the security of the antisubmarine and ship net guarding the harbour, Lieutenant Harold Kaminski, took it upon himself to try to get things moving regarding some sort of response to the Ward’s messages. He telephoned Admiral Bloch’s chief-of-staff, Captain John B. Earle, and Kaminski also ordered the ready-duty destroyer, the USS Monaghan, to ‘proceed immediately and contact the Ward in defensive in sea area’.7 Captain Earle in turn telephoned Admiral Bloch, and the two senior officers discussed the reports, and concluded that it was probably just another false submarine sighting. With the Monaghan assisting the Ward the two vessels were more than capable of dealing with the situation. Earle told Kaminski to inform the 6th Fleet’s Operations Officer of the event, but to take no further action. Confusion reigned ashore, as the Ward now reported that she had intercepted a fishing sampan inside the security defence zone, and required a navy cutter to escort the vessel away from the vicinity. When Earle was informed he wondered why the Ward would go off intercepting sampans when she believed a submarine to be in the area, and concluded that the Ward’s crew had misidentified their earlier submarine contact. Therefore, it was just another false alarm.
The Japanese air armada of carrier aircraft, led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, was fast approaching Oahu. Another American destroyer, the USS Chew, reported to 14th Naval District that she had attacked and sunk a midget submarine outside the entrance to the harbour. The Ward continued depth-charging operations as American patrol vessels charged about seeing submarines everywhere. They were still busily engaged in this when the first Japanese aircraft passed overhead and roared down to bomb and strafe Ford Island, Battleship Row and Hickam Field US Army Air Corps base. The reports of submarine contacts were soon drowned out by the full-scale aerial assault being made on the naval base and vessels moored in the harbour. The Ward and the Monaghan sounded ‘General Quarters’ at 8 a.m., after a Japanese bomb landed close to the Monaghan. Anti-aircraft guns were hastily manned, the crews doing what they could to return fire against the Japanese planes knocking Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Fleet to pieces virtually at will.
By 8.14 a.m. the harbour patrol destroyers had commenced a steady anti-aircraft barrage directed against Commander Fuchida’s carrier air group. The Monaghan was ordered to move down the harbour approach channel, and while making this journey she encountered the seaplane tender USS Curtiss at 8.53 a.m. Although a massive air battle raged overhead, the Curtiss was flying signal flags indicating that a submarine was threatening her. Crewmen aboard the destroyer watched as the Curtiss trained her guns on the water and opened fire at a floating object. The destroyer quickly identified the object as a small submarine before the craft slinked beneath the surface, reappearing at 8.40 a.m. This midget submarine was well within the harbour defences, cruising around off Ford Island in the centre of the harbour. The midget had been able to penetrate so deeply into Pearl Harbor because, as related earlier, a gate had been left open from 5 a.m. that morning at the entrance to allow the USS Antares to enter. It had remained open while the destroyer USS Ward had attacked and sunk a midget submarine by the harbour entrance, and no one had subsequently closed the boom and net as Pearl Harbor came under sustained and heavy air attack that morning. The midget that was lurking off Ford Island shot a single torpedo that sailed past the Curtiss, narrowly missing the light cruiser USS Rayleigh, before running into the land opposite Pearl City and exploding.
The Monaghan now attempted to deal with the midget, firing a single 5-inch shell at the small conning tower from her main gun, but the midget turned about and shot its final torpedo at the destroyer. The Japanese torpedo shot past the Monaghan and blew up when it struck land at Ford Island. Lieutenant-Commander W. P. Burford, captain of the Monaghan, decided upon a drastic course of action at this point. He ordered the engine room to give him full speed, and then pointed the destroyer’s bows at the little submarine and set to ram it. After a few seconds the destroyer struck the midget, which was dragged along the length of the Monaghan before it passed by. A quick-thinking torpedoman stationed in the destroyer’s stern watched the midget submarine trail along the side of his ship, and quickly fus
ed a depth charge that he dropped overboard alongside the midget. Burford ordered another depth charge dropped, but then the Monaghan ran aground onto a submerged mud bank. The two depth charges exploded, and great geysers of seawater, black with oil, shot high into the air marking the destruction of the Japanese submarine. The Monaghan extricated herself from the mud. All the time this little action was occurring Japanese air attacks continued all around the Americans, but the Monaghan and her crew were unharmed.
The Japanese submariners continued in their efforts to press home attacks on the US fleet. At 9.50 a.m. the destroyer USS Blue obtained a contact with a suspected submarine outside the harbour. The Blue laid a pattern of depth charges and reported the probable destruction of the enemy vessel. Attempting to exit the carnage that was Pearl Harbor that morning, the light cruiser USS St. Louis dodged two torpedoes running towards her before they exploded. A small submarine conning tower was seen, and the cruiser engaged the target with her main batteries, claiming to have scored hits.
The I-24’s temperamental Type-A, whose defective gyrocompass had almost cost Ensign Sakamaki his place on the mission, was now the only midget still operational. Sakamaki’s boat, however, had been extensively damaged by the depth charge barrages laid at the harbour entrance. The midget’s steering gear was almost gone, and the batteries were cracked and leeching noxious fumes into the crew compartment as Sakamaki and Petty Officer Inagaki struggled to nurse their vessel towards the harbour entrance channel, and its open gate. Both men were buoyed up immensely when Sakamaki viewed through the periscope the huge columns of black smoke rising from Pearl Harbor, indicating the success of the aerial assault. Sakamaki was determined that he would add to the destruction with his two torpedoes, never considering abandoning his mission and attempting to rendezvous with the mother submarines. At 8.15 a.m. Sakamaki surfaced the boat to attempt to locate the harbour entrance and a potential target through his periscope, only to have the American destroyer USS Helm loom large in the lens as the ship raced for the open sea. The destroyer clearly discerned the midget submarine limping towards the harbour entrance. As the two vessels converged, the Japanese submarine ground onto a submerged reef, exposing herself completely to the Helm’s guns. But, although the destroyer blazed away no hits were made, and gingerly, Sakamaki was able to get the Type-A off the reef and submerged. Once beneath the waves the two Japanese sailors assessed their situation. The air inside the submarine was becoming unbearable, and the men were in danger of being overcome by the battery fumes. The defective steering meant the Type-A wallowed around uncontrollably, making directed movement or assuming a firing position almost impossible. One of the torpedo tubes had also become inoperable as a result of striking the reef, so Sakamaki decided to use his entire vessel as one giant torpedo and ram the next American warship they encountered. This would result in their deaths, but both men were fully committed to such an end. For the rest of the morning Sakamaki vainly tried to obtain some measure of control over the submarine, but another grounding on a reef knocked out the second torpedo tube. The midget was now adrift, with the crew swimming in and out of consciousness in the thick air inside the submarine, as they attempted to reach Lanai Island and the mother ships waiting there. Sakamaki opened the submarines hatch to air the crew compartment, before falling asleep again, and for the rest of the night of the 7–8 December the submarine drifted about, hatch open, crew asleep until further efforts were made to use the engine to get them to Lanai. The engine barely worked, and the attempt was abandoned, for without a compass they also had no idea where they were, and which direction salvation lay. At some point on the early morning of 8 December the midget submarine ran aground for the final time on a reef some way off a deserted beach. Sakamaki ordered the vessel abandoned, and the two Japanese plunged into the heavy sea and attempted to swim for the shore. Unfortunately, Petty Officer Inagaki was lost in the waves and drowned, while Sakamaki washed up exhausted but alive on Waimanalo Beach, close to a devastated Bellow’s Field Army Air Corps base. Sakamaki came ashore virtually into the arms of a patrol of American soldiers from the 298th Infantry Regiment and was taken prisoner. Sakamaki was the first Japanese serviceman taken prisoner during the Second World War, and the young naval officer was stricken with humiliation and shame. It was to prove an intelligence coup for the Americans, and they hoped to discover from Sakamaki more about the strange little submarines that had so boldly attacked the anchorage.