by Mark Felton
By February 1942 Nishino had returned to the area of his humiliation several years before, but this time commanding a well-armed and powerful submarine. On the evening of 23 February, as the light disappeared from the sky, the Japanese submarine motored on the surface towards the giant refinery, its dozens of derricks fronting huge aviation fuel storage tanks situated on a hill behind the beach. Nishino stood on the conning tower bridge, scanning the place he hated more than perhaps any other with binoculars, the deck-gunners having already loaded their weapon with a 140mm shell. At exactly 7.15 p.m. Nishino ordered the gunners to commence firing. The first reports of the gun, which echoed across the mile or so of sea separating the submarine from the land, brought local residents and oil workers to their windows. Many workers rushed out of a popular local drinking hole where they were relaxing after a hard day of labour. Confusion reigned after the impact of the first shell as people attempted to locate the source of the explosion. As the deck-gun banged out for a second time oil workers spotted the Japanese submarine sitting on the surface out at sea opposite the refinery, workman G.O. Brown commenting afterwards that it was ‘so big I thought it might be a destroyer or a cruiser’. Within minutes the local police were informed of an enemy submarine boldly sitting on the surface, firing at the oil refinery. The local sheriff assured the callers that American aircraft were on their way to deal with the intruder. However, the American authorities would be unable to do very much about it, a fact not lost on Commander Nishino.
Anywhere between sixteen and twenty-four shells were fired by the I-17; accounts vary. Eleven were counted falling into the sea, while at least three struck and damaged rigging and pumping equipment at an oil head. Other shells passed over the refinery to land on ranches up to three miles from the coast. Nishino certainly came close to starting a major conflagration, as one shell exploded in a field only thirty yards from one of the giant aviation storage tanks. Suddenly, Nishino abruptly ordered the gunners to cease firing at 7.35 p.m., and the I-17 departed the scene on the surface, moving along the Santa Barbara Channel for the open sea. At the small town of Montecito, sixteen miles east of Ellwood, Reverend Arthur Basham noticed the submarine ‘…heading south toward Los Angeles and flashing lights as if it were attempting to signal with the shore’. The submarine was still reported to be motoring on the surface at 8.30 p.m. by coastal residents, and Basham’s report to local police fuelled suspicions that Japanese-Americans had been in communication with Nishino’s boat and aided his locating targets. Reports of flashing lights out at sea off Santa Barbara led to the imposition of a blackout until just after midnight as local authorities feared further bombardments against shore communities.
Nishino’s attack, though perhaps only serving as one man’s lust for revenge, cannot be entirely dismissed as a freak event. The huge Ellwood oil refinery was an important military and economic target, and had Nishino succeeded in setting fire to the aviation fuel stored there, he would have scored a significant victory. Commander Nishino made history by becoming the first person to successfully attack the mainland of the United States since the War of 1812. But, more important by far was the fear and panic Nishino’s audacious attack sparked off along the American west coast. Many believed the United States was about to be invaded, coming so soon on the back of the successful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor only three months before. What occurred in Los Angeles just days after the Ellwood refinery attack demonstrated to everyone that invasion fears were widespread and all that was required was a spark to ignite the entire coastal region.
Following the I-17’s successful deck-gun bombardment of the Ellwood Oil Refinery on 23 February, United States forces defending the west coast were placed on high alert. Another scenario apart from invasion faced by the United States authorities was a Japanese air raid on one or more of the large west coast metropolises such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that a Japanese carrier force could repeat the kind of mass aerial attack witnessed at Pearl Harbor, this time attempting to disrupt civilian life instead of destroying a military target (not forgetting that all of these cities had a sizeable US Navy presence). Nishino’s attack further undermined relations between white and Japanese-Americans, which had already been severely eroded following the Pearl Harbor raid.
In Los Angeles, anti-aircraft guns and searchlights were standing ready to take on the Japanese, an alert system was operational with 10,000 air raid wardens ready to take to the streets, and army radar units carefully monitored their green scopes for a Japanese presence in the skies above the ‘City of Angels’. At 2.25 a.m. on 25 February, as most residents of Los Angeles slept soundly in their beds, an eerie sound grew across the city heralding imminent danger.2 Hundreds of air raid sirens wailed through the still night air, triggered by the spark necessary to light the invasion fear touch paper – a radar contact recorded at slightly before 2 a.m. The blip on the radar screen was formally identified at 2.07 a.m. as an unidentified aircraft approaching the coast. Officers at IV Interceptor Command, tasked with defending Los Angeles from aerial attack, immediately posted a yellow alert. For fifteen minutes the unknown contact was tracked, still approaching Los Angeles, and as the aircraft did not deviate from its course the alert status was upgraded to blue. A blue alert signified to military, civil defence and police authorities that the aircraft was presumed to be hostile. Following just three minutes later was the order to go to the red alert status. As far as the authorities were now concerned, an enemy air raid was imminent. Across the city the mournful blaring of air raid sirens awakened residents. Searchlight beams stabbed out into the night sky, the city was blacked-out, and anti-aircraft batteries reported themselves ‘manned-and-ready’ to IV Interceptor Command Headquarters. Thousands of air raid wardens and police officers took to the streets to assist the military.
By 2.32 a.m. all anti-aircraft batteries and searchlight units had completed reporting their status.3 The anti-aircraft weapons employed by IV Interceptor Command were 37mm cannon and larger 3-inch guns. The combined number of guns within Los Angeles could place forty-eight flak shells into the sky every minute, creating a perilous curtain of fire for any would-be bombers to penetrate. At 3.16 a.m. all anti-aircraft guns suddenly commenced firing, hundreds of shells exploding like some crazed fireworks display high above the city, until the guns ceased firing at 3.36 a.m. Searchlights continued to trace bright patterns across the sky, when suddenly, at 4.05 a.m. the flak guns recommenced firing. At 4.15 a.m. silence once more returned to the city as the batteries ceased their blind hammering of the empty sky. Thirty minutes of sustained anti-aircraft fire had hurled approximately 1,440 rounds of both 37mm and 3-inch ammunition into the air above Los Angeles, equating to a massive ten tons of ordnance.4 Most of the shells had exploded at their preset altitudes, some had not. Either way, ten tons of expended shrapnel and unexploded shells now fell back onto the city below. Some of the larger 3-inch shells that had failed to explode in mid-air detonated instead when they began impacting all over Los Angeles. Houses and garages were damaged, as white-hot shards of shrapnel ripped through homes, often narrowly missing terrified residents.
As the sun came up later that morning army bomb disposal teams were at work all over the city, roping off streets from curious bystanders before making safe American 3-inch shells that had buried themselves in roads and gardens without exploding. Incredibly, only eight citizens of Los Angeles had died during the ‘air raid’, most from heart attacks or accidents in the blackout. At the North American Aviation factory complex located at Inglewood, brand-new B-25 Mitchell medium bombers were discovered with wings peppered by falling shrapnel. More serious was the metaphorical fallout of the ‘air raid’ in the treatment of California’s Japanese-American community. Several days prior to the phantom raid on Los Angeles, President Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066. This law required the enforced internment of all Japanese-Americans for the duration of the conflict in ‘concentration camps�
�� outside the city. During the night of the ‘air raid’ police, who believed them to have been signalling to enemy aircraft with lights, arbitrarily arrested dozens of Japanese-Americans. Most of these people were only guilty of driving a car during a blackout, or other minor infractions of the law.
The questions began almost as soon as the last flak shell dropped back onto the city: did the Japanese attack Los Angeles on 25 February 1942? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. Reporters arrived at a ludicrous figure of fifty enemy aircraft over the city during the ‘air raid’, and the American military provided some face-saving ‘evidence’ with which to prove that an attack had indeed taken place. For example, the 122nd Coast Artillery Regiment, guarding an aircraft factory at Downey, identified several aircraft flying beyond the maximum range of their guns, but fired at them anyway. At Long Beach, Battery G, 78th Coast Artillery Regiment protecting the Douglas Aircraft factory, logged twenty-five to thirty enemy bombers, followed half an hour later by another fifteen, all flying in formation. This battery fired 246 3-inch shells into the sky, claiming the mystery bombers then moved out to sea.5 Officially at least, the Japanese did launch an attack on Los Angeles, according to the US Army after receiving several reports from anti-aircraft batteries. The army settled on a tentative estimate of fifteen enemy aircraft over the city between 2.30 a.m. and 4.30 a.m. This raises an obvious question: fifteen aircraft could only have come from a Japanese aircraft carrier, and a detailed search undertaken the next day failed to demonstrate a Japanese naval presence in inshore west coast waters (submarines not included). In the light of this news the authorities changed their official story, stating that the fifteen aircraft reported were most probably of civilian origin, and had been, conveniently, piloted by enemy agents. On 26 February, the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, completely undermined the army’s statements when he declared that the ‘air raid’ on Los Angeles had been a false alarm. The US Army continued to defend its original assertion for some time, eventually requiring Congressional intervention, perhaps unwilling to accept the embarrassment of having been firing at phantoms rather than Japanese bombers on the night of 25 February. No evidence has ever been produced to prove that the Japanese did raid Los Angeles, no bomb damage was recorded anywhere in the city, no planes were downed by anti-aircraft fire, and no one has ever come forward to say that they participated in the raid, Japanese pilot or ‘enemy agent’. The reaction of IV Interceptor Command to the unidentified aircraft that appeared on their radar screens was perhaps indicative of how all citizens of the west coast felt and wanted to react after the I-17 attack. Clearly, the Americans were seeing Japanese aircraft where there were none. Japanese submarines were very real, however, and all Americans living in California and Oregon knew that the enemy was close. What the phantom Los Angeles air raid perhaps demonstrated above all else was the fears of invasion and attack Americans were living with in early 1942, and the competence of the civil defence and anti-aircraft units whose job was to protect the city. They did their job on the night of 25 February, and stood ready to protect the city from any future Japanese attack.
Commander Nishino and the I-17 remained at their assigned patrol area after the attack on the Ellwood Oil Refinery. On 28 February, five days after the shore bombardment, and three following the phantom Japanese air raid on Los Angeles, Nishino struck again. Lookouts located the tanker William A. Berg, and Nishino shot a single torpedo at the American ship.6 Fortunately for the merchant seamen the Japanese torpedo detonated prematurely, but Nishino believed that he had struck the tanker. The William A. Berg escaped damage and made off from the scene of her close brush with disaster.
Less than three months after the gigantic Japanese aerial and submarine onslaught against Pearl Harbor a second, considerably more modest, raid on the US Pacific Fleet’s anchorage was mounted by the Imperial Navy. Although nothing more than a ‘nuisance raid’, the logistical planning required to strike once again at American soil demonstrated the excellent Japanese use of aircraft and submarines working in close cooperation. Submarines were destined to play a crucial role in the operation, codenamed ‘K’, and much more effectively than the suicidal midget submarine attacks of December 1941.
The Japanese devised a plan to use a pair of newly introduced Kawanishi H8K1 four-engine naval flying boats of the 24th Air Flotilla to strike Oahu.7 These aircraft, given the codename ‘Emily’ by the Allies, had a maximum range of 3,040 miles and were able to haul one ton of bombs. They were a Japanese equivalent of the famous British Short Sunderland, though larger (incidentally, before the war the Kawanishi company had had a close working partnership with Belfast-based seaplane manufacturers Short Brothers). The plan would see both of these huge aircraft, each with a crew of ten, fly from a starting point at Wotje Atoll in the Marshall Islands to a midway point and rendezvous position at the remote French Frigate Shoals located 482 miles from Pearl Harbor. The submarine I-9 was ‘assigned to take up station midway between Wotje and the Shoal and act as a radio beacon’8 for the two flying boats. At French Frigate Shoals the pair of flying boats would meet two large Japanese submarines that would be waiting for them inside the protected lagoon. The two submarines selected for the primary part of the mission were the I-15 and I-19 respectively, both boats normally being fitted with the tiny two-seater Yokosuka E14Y1 floatplane for reconnaissance in a watertight hanger in front of the conning tower. For the purposes of Operation K the planes were removed and replaced with ten tons of aviation fuel in drums on each submarine, packed inside the hangar space for safe transit to French Frigate Shoals. After the arrival of the flying boats the two submarines would replenish the planes’ fuel tanks before the Kawanishi’s set off on the final leg of their outbound mission to Oahu. As a backup, should either of the two submarines be lost, the I-26 was directed to shadow the pair and act as a reserve fuel tanker, and also to act as a picket to constantly scan for any enemy activity in the vicinity.
The submarine I-23, under Lieutenant-Commander Genichi Shibata, had a more hazardous task to perform, which required her to creep as close as ten miles from the coast of Oahu and report on weather conditions over the target. Additionally, should either or both of the flying boats be shot down during the run over Pearl Harbor, the I-23 was to attempt to rescue any downed aircrew.
The Kawanishi H8K1 was also nicknamed the ‘Flying Porcupine’, and for good reason. Mounted in turrets and blisters around the aircraft were five 20mm cannon and four 7.7mm machine guns, making it a dangerous quarry for any roving Allied fighter to tackle. A pair working in close cooperation, and covering one another with their guns would be more concerned about ground anti-aircraft fire than fighter interception.
The Japanese selected 1 March 1942 as the day of the attack, and all submarines taking part in the operation were expected to be in position one day before the flying boats showed up. The I-15 and I-19 sailed imperiously into the lagoon at French Frigate Shoals at the assigned time, deck-guns fully manned in case American lookouts or coast watchers had been planted on the islands. Lieutenant Toshi Hashizume and Ensign Tomaro had been selected as the pilots of the respective Kawanishi’s, and they departed from Yokosuka harbour in Japan on 15 February and began the long journey to the mission jumping-off point. The flight plan took them first to Saipan in the Marianas, then the big Japanese naval base at Truk in the Carolines, and on to Jaliut in the Marshall Islands before they splashed down at Wotje Atoll. Weather was the all-important factor determining when the mission actually began, and information about the weather over Oahu came to the Japanese from two different sources. Firstly, they had cleverly cracked the local weather reporting code used by US naval air stations at Midway Island, Hawaii and Johnson Atoll. The second source would come from the submarine I-23, positioned ten miles to the south of Oahu. Unfortunately, just as the Japanese were gearing up to launch the mission all information concerning weather ceased. Two things had occurred which meant a delay in launching the aircraft on their way to Pearl Harbor. The first was a
routine change in the code being used by the US Navy to report weather conditions over their airfields in the region, leaving the Japanese outside of the information loop. The other was the sudden loss of contact with the I-23, Radio communications emanating from the Japanese were also being picked up by the Americans, indicating to them that there was Japanese submarine activity in the area of French Frigate Shoals, ‘…so the Americans, centered on the Naval Combat Intelligence Unit at Pearl Harbor, broke Japanese naval codes, enabling them to ascertain the whereabouts of Japanese surface and submarine assets’.9 The sudden loss of contact with the I-23 was ominous, and, according to Hackett and Kingsepp, the Japanese Navy presumed the submarine lost with all hands on 28 February off Hawaii.