The Fujita Plan: Japanese Attacks on the United States and Australia During the Second World War

by Mark Felton

  Staying in the same general operation area as the previous story of the demise of the I-124, later in 1942 a Japanese was to earn a ruthless reputation over one particular merchant ship sinking. The Imperial Navy was no more immune from committing outrages against International Law than the army on land. The sinking of the small Burns Philp ship Mamutu north of Murray Island in Queensland on 7 August 1942 by the Japanese submarine RO-33 demonstrated the savagery the Japanese were capable of in war, a savagery directed against innocent women and children.

  The Japanese constructed twenty medium submarines of the Kaichu Type, of which the RO-33 was the first in the series. Four shipyards in Japan built the vessels between 1934 and 1944, the RO-33 belonging to the earlier K.5 variant. The RO-33 was 264 feet in length and displaced 1,115 tons. Powered by two diesel engines and a pair of electric motors, the boat had a maximum surface speed of 19.8 knots, or 8 knots submerged. She could travel 5,000 nautical miles at a comfortable 16 knots before refuelling was necessary, making the type ideal for inshore patrol work. By mid-1942 the RO-33 and her sister vessel, the RO-34, were being employed patrolling the waters between New Guinea and Australia, as the Japanese attempted to wrest control of Port Moresby from the Allies.

  Fitted with four torpedo tubes, and loaded with just eight torpedoes, the RO-33 was fitted with a 80mm deck-gun and a 25mm anti-aircraft gun. The Kaichu Type fell victim to massive Allied anti-submarine countermeasures as the war progressed, and of the twenty vessels produced only one, RO-50, survived the war to be surrendered to the US Navy. Fifty-four officers and men crewed the type, and the ruthless Lieutenant-Commander Shigeshi Kuriyama, who had taken over the vessel on 18 April 1942, skippered the RO-33.

  Based at Rabaul, on 20 April RO-33 departed from the Japanese submarine base to reconnoitre Australian-held Port Moresby in New Guinea. Submarine Division 21 under Captain Hidetoshi Iwagami formed the submarine element of the South Seas Force, the Japanese fleet that was preparing to assist army forces in investing Port Moresby. Submarine Division 21 was ordered to send submarines to reconnoitre the Russell and Deboyne Islands in the hope of discovering useful anchorages before the planned assault began on Port Moresby. The RO-33 and RO-34 were then ordered to form a submarine blockade of Port Moresby, to prevent reinforcements and supplies from reaching the embattled Australian troops, and to guide Japanese shipping into the area of operations.

  After a brief respite back in Rabaul, the RO-33 joined Operation Mo, the Japanese invasions of Tulagi, the Solomon Islands and Port Moresby. On 4 May Rear-Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka’s Attack Force departed from Rabaul to cover Rear-Admiral Koso Abe’s Transport Force taking Japanese troops to attack Port Moresby. Kajioka, aboard the light cruiser Yubari, along with four destroyers and a patrol boat, escorted Abe’s twelve troop transports. The US Navy’s Task Force 17, based around the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, attacked the Tulagi Invasion Force under Rear-Admiral Kiyohide Shima. In what has subsequently become known as the Battle of the Coral Sea, Rear-Admiral Frank J. Fletcher managed to sink a Japanese destroyer and three minesweepers, and damage four other ships, disrupting the Japanese assault. On 5 May the battle widened, as Fletcher’s force engaged the Japanese Carrier Strike Force under Vice-Admiral Takeo Takagi. Aircraft from the Yorktown and the carrier USS Lexington sank the light carrier Shoho, but in response Japanese aircraft sank an American destroyer. On the same day the RO-33 arrived off Port Moresby as the Battle of the Coral Sea grew in ferocity. On 8 May aircraft from the Lexington discovered the Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, and Shokaku was sufficiently damaged to force her withdrawal from the operation. Although suffering heavy losses, the air group from Zuikaku drove home devastating attacks on the Lexington and Yorktown, resulting in the near destruction of the Lexington, which was abandoned and later scuttled.

  The Battle of the Coral Sea effectively halted the Japanese central thrust towards Port Moresby, forcing the cancellation of Operation Mo, and the return of the Imperial fleet to Rabaul. Japanese submarines, however, continued harassing operations off the Port Moresby area, and in the waters off northern Queensland in Australia. In the meantime, Port Moresby was under constant Japanese aerial bombardment, some seventy bombing raids being sent against the town by the time the Mamutu departed, forcing many of the civilian inhabitants to attempt to flee from New Guinea for the comparative safety of Australia. They would do so by crossing waters aggressively patrolled by Japanese submarines such as the RO-33.

  On 29 July 1942 the RO-33 set out from Rabaul to operate in the Coral Sea off Port Moresby and along the south-east coast of New Guinea. The submarine had yet to sink a ship in war, and Commander Kuriyama was undoubtedly determined that this would change. By 6 August the RO-33 had moved across the Coral Sea north of Murray Island, off the Queensland coast. On the same day the 300-ton Mamutu, a white-painted, single smokestack steamer departed the bombed-out ruins of Port Moresby and headed for the small town of Daru, located on the western shores of the Gulf of Papua. From Daru the evacuees could be moved on by ship to Cape York and Australia. Captain McEachern and thirty-seven crewmen had taken aboard eighty-two civilian passengers, including twenty-eight children. The voyage across the Gulf was uneventful until just after 11 a.m. on 7 August when lookouts positioned in the stern spotted a surfaced Japanese submarine closing in on the vessel. The Mamutu was completely unarmed, and McEachern could do little to prevent a Japanese attack, except perhaps hope that the submarine’s skipper would not think it prudent to waste a torpedo on such small fry. Commander Kuriyama was of the opinion that expending one of his valuable torpedoes on the Mamutu was indeed improvident, but there were other options available to him.

  As the RO-33 rapidly closed with the Mamutu Kuriyama ordered the 80mm deck-gun manned and trained on the helpless steamer. Aboard the Mamutu considerable panic had broken out, as the civilians aboard realized that the Japanese intended to sink their vessel. The wireless operator had already been instructed to send a Morse code message to Port Moresby advising them of the presence of a Japanese submarine. Any further attempts at communicating with the outside world were abruptly terminated by a Japanese shell that slammed into the radio room, killing the operator instantly and rendering the wireless equipment useless. A second shell soon followed, the bridge exploding outwards in a hail of glass, splintered wood and shrapnel, Captain McEachern dying instantly. The Mamutu was now without steering and communications, but heedless of the decks alive with the panicked movement of dozens of crewmen, women and children, the Japanese gunners mercilessly flayed the ship’s hull with armour-piercing shells. Many of the passengers were killed or horribly injured as white-hot shards of shrapnel and razor-like pieces of wood and glass cut through the air around them.

  Before long the Mamutu began to sink, and the dazed and frightened survivors leaped into the water and clung to any floating object they could find, women clutching terrified young children, as the RO-33 slowed as it came upon them. Survivors noted Japanese sailors running about on the conning tower, long objects being brought up from below, and heard guttural orders bellowed by officers. Some survivors had already begun to swim away from the RO-33, realizing instinctively that the danger was not over, when the first rattle of machine-gun fire reached their ears. Japanese sailors atop the conning tower busily worked light machine guns backwards and forwards across the bobbing heads of the Mamutu’s dazed survivors, the bullets kicking up plumes of water, as the survivors screams were drowned out by the hail of lead directed towards them. Women and children, some begging for mercy, others screaming in terror, were systematically butchered in this fashion as Kuriyama calmly directed his men’s fire. Finally satisfied that the survivors had been disposed of, the RO-33 motored away from the scene of the crime, leaving a seascape of floating corpses and bits of wreckage soon to be investigated by sharks cruising towards the disturbed underwater sounds that they had sensed, and attracted by the taste of blood in the water. But Kuriyama had not been thorough enough in concealing his crime, for
amongst the bodies and wreckage twenty-eight people remained alive, a small fraction of the 120 who had boarded the Mamutu the day before. How would they now survive cast adrift in the ocean far from rescue? The answer came in the shape of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber sent to investigate the Mamutu’s report of a Japanese submarine. The B-17 dropped life rafts into the ocean among the survivors, who struggled to board them, and began to make for the shore. In the meantime, word had arrived on Murray Island that a ship was in trouble and the Australian Army signal ship Reliance was dispatched to locate the survivors. However, the Reliance did not manage to find them, the survivors eventually making their own way to safety.

  As for Kuriyama and the RO-33, the submarine’s days were numbered. After another visit to Rabaul the RO-33 had been sent back to patrol off Port Moresby. On 29 August it was laying in a submerged position at periscope depth close to the entrance to Port Moresby, when Kuriyama spotted two ships departing the harbour in company. He selected as his target the 3,310-ton merchant ship Malaita, which was being escorted by the Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Arunta. Both ships were sailing to Cairns to escape the incessant Japanese bombing raids on Port Moresby. At 11.34 a.m. the Malaita was struck by a single torpedo on her starboard side below the bridge, and the freighter heeled over immediately, taking on a heavy list. The captain gave the order to abandon ship at 12.45 p.m., as he feared the vessel was about to capsize completely, but the list was eventually arrested, and the crew re-boarded her. The Malaita would survive her encounter with the RO-33, and was taken in tow back to Port Moresby. The RO-33, however, was not so lucky. The Arunta had begun an immediate Asdic search for the submarine, and was not slow in locating a promising submerged target. Commander J. C. Morrow aboard the Arunta ordered several depth charge attacks launched over the Asdic target, eventually resulting in large quantities of fuel oil rising to the surface. Entombed in their shattered steel coffin on the bottom of the Coral Sea lay Kuriyama and his fifty-three subordinates, a fittingly gruesome end for a murderous and sadistic commander and crew.

  Notes

  1. Commanding Officer to Commander in Chief, US Asiatic Fleet, Action taken against Submarines by USS Edsall, January 31, 1942 (Film Nix, DK, National Archives [NARA], Washington DC.)

  2. ibid.

  3. ibid.

  4. ibid.

  5. ibid

  6. ibid.

  7. Confidential Action Report. Activities of USS Edsall for January 20–21 [Covers anti-submarine operations while escorting “Trinity” to Port Darwin, Australia.], 22 January 1942, (Film Nix, DK, National Archives [NARA], Washington DC.)

  8. ibid.

  9. Commander Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Nine to The Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southwest Pacific, 1st Endorsement on CO EDSALL, February 10, 1942, (Film Nix, DK, National Archives [NARA], Washington DC.

  Chapter 5

  Bombarding America

  …the broad oceans that have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 23 February 1942

  Sensible Americans know that the submarine shelling of the Pacific coast was a warning to the nation that the Paradise created by George Washington is on the verge of destruction.

  Radio Tokyo, 3 March 1942

  Following the attacks launched on American coastal shipping along the west coast of the United States during December 1941, one of the submarines involved was probably responsible for sparking an invasion scare in America. The I-17, under Lieutenant-Commander Kozo Nishino, moved to complete the original orders issued to all nine Japanese submarine skippers on entering United States waters. As related in Chapter 2, the Imperial Navy’s 6th Fleet at Kwajalein had conceived a two-part plan. Vice-Admiral Shimizu had ordered the submarines to interdict American merchant shipping, and then to expend remaining deck-gun ammunition against shore targets. The submarines I-17, I-19, I-21 and I-23 had all launched deck-gun and torpedo attacks against American coastal merchantmen, with hardly any successes. The I-17 had attacked the Samoa on 18 December, and had failed to sink her. On 20 December Nishino had attacked the Emidio, and although he had inflicted damage the ship did not sink and the abandoned vessel had eventually run aground. The I-23 had attacked the tanker Agwiworld, also on 20 December, but had failed to sink her. The I-21 engaged the H. M. Story on 22 December, but the pattern had repeated itself and the ship had escaped further attention. On the following day the I-21 had intercepted yet another tanker, the Larry Doheny, but the vessel fortunately escaped the Japanese submarine’s clutches, leading to deep frustration among the submarine’s crew. Commander Matsumura tried again shortly after, and this time did manage to sink the tanker Montebello, as well as attempting to massacre the surviving crewmembers in complete violation of International Law, and the treaties and protocols Japan had herself signed before the war. The I-19, however, had had very little success, missing the schooner Barbara Olsen with a torpedo on 24 December, and damaging the freighter Absaroka later that same day. The Absaroka was run aground and subsequently survived.

  Several reasons for the apparent inability of Japanese submarines to sink unarmed and unescorted American merchant vessels can be suggested. Firstly there is the issue of tactics. Attempting to shell a ship using the submarine’s deck-gun began many of the attacks. Unfavourable sea conditions and poor light cruelly exposed the ineffectiveness of this strategy, as many of the attacks were made at night, or in the very early morning. Secondly, the torpedo attacks launched by the submarines were no less fraught with failure. The powerful Long Lance torpedo either missed the target through human error, or passed beneath the target due to bad luck. When they did strike they often caused insufficient damage to sink the target vessel immediately. The Japanese submarine skippers appeared to be labouring under an official order requesting them to expend only one torpedo per merchant ship attacked. This was a limiting factor on a submariner’s ability to use the torpedo to its full potential as a weapon, especially as compared with the German (and that of the British and American) tactic of firing a spread or two or more torpedoes at a target to better ensure a hit and the destruction of the targeted vessel. A third factor that appeared to limit the success of the Japanese submarine campaign along America’s west coast was the fledgling American anti-submarine forces ranged against the Japanese. Although in their infancy in terms of experience and technology, these aircraft and warships managed to disrupt some of the Japanese submarine attacks, and to deter Japanese skippers from following through with their attacks. Although the Japanese Navy’s chief of staff, Admiral Nagano, cancelled the order he had issued to submarines to bombard shore targets in America, as he feared retaliatory attacks on Japanese installations and towns, Commander Nishino in the I-17 appears to have ignored his orders and to have proceeded with the original instructions to strike the shore.

  The story of Nishino’s attack on the Barnsdall Oil Company’s Ellwood refinery located ten miles north of Santa Barbara, California, appears rooted simply in a desire for personal revenge. During the late 1930s Nishino was a merchant seaman, captain of a Japanese oil tanker that had arrived at the Ellwood refinery’s mile-long row of derricks for unloading. Oil company executives invited Nishino and his crew to a welcoming ceremony north of the beach. As Nishino and his men made their way along a path from the beach the proud Japanese sea captain slipped, and landed on top of a prickly-pear cactus. Delighted American oil workers could not control themselves at the sight of Captain Nishino having cactus spines extracted from his backside, and Nishino’s humiliation and loss of face was complete. It must also be remembered that in February 1942 Japan stood at the high water mark of her conquests. British Malaya had fallen, and the great naval base of Singapore had surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February, and 100,000 British, Australian and Indian troops had fallen into Japanese hands. In Burma, the British were in retreat, conducting a fighting withdrawal through a thous
and miles of hills and jungle. The 17th Indian Division was, by February, in serious danger of being cut off at the Sittang River, the British exit into the relative safety of India. The war was also going badly for the United States. General Douglas MacArthur’s forces were bottled up in the Bataan Peninsula on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, and MacArthur himself had just been ordered to abandon his doomed command by no less than President Franklin Roosevelt himself and flee ignominiously to Australia. The American island of Wake had been in Japanese hands for two months, and fast approaching it were the remnants of the US Pacific Fleet, a small task force built around the carrier USS Enterprise commanded by Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey. The Japanese were poised to launch an invasion of Java in the Netherlands East Indies, one of the final frontiers of Allied resistance in the south before Australia.1 Perhaps personal reasons drove Nishino to disregard Nagano’s orders and shell the American coast, and perhaps his decision was made in a moment of national euphoria, as the expanding Japanese empire appeared unstoppable. After later battlefield reverses some Japanese military officers were to label this total belief in the abilities of the military to continue their conquests the ‘victory disease’.