The Tjisalak’s crew stared in silence.
“Where is your captain?”
When there was no response, Nakahara tried again:
“Where-is-the-captain!”
Finally, the Tjisalak’s master, Capt. C. Hen, stood in his lifeboat and shouted: “I am the captain! What do you want?”
“You must come alongside and report!”19
Captain Hen didn’t have much choice, so he did what he was told. After everyone in his lifeboat climbed aboard the I-8, the Tjisalak’s senior officers were identified, their hands were tied behind their back, and they were pushed through a hatch in the sail. The remaining crew were held at gunpoint, stripped of their life preservers, and thoroughly searched.
None of the I-8’s crew were prepared to take 102 prisoners, resulting in considerable confusion.20 One thing was clear, however—they all wanted souvenirs. One of the Tjisalak’s survivors had his knife confiscated, while another lost his watch. Money, jewelry, official papers, and personal photos were also taken.
After the survivors were searched, their hands were tied, and they were led one by one to the sub’s foredeck, where they were made to sit cross-legged with their heads bowed. When the last lifeboat was emptied, Nakahara began shouting from the bridge.
“Do not look back because that will be too bad for you.”
The officers on deck joined in: “Do not run! Do not run! Suppose you run? You will be shot.”21
The clumsy English was less about communication and more about intimidating the Tjisalak’s crew. But some of the prisoners ignored the threat and looked anyway.
The sun was brutally hot as the sub rocked with the motion of the waves. After the last lifeboat was cast adrift, the I-8’s machine guns opened up and filled it with holes. Then the sub’s diesel engines sprang to life,22 and the I-8 headed east.23
Lt. (jg) Sadao Motonaka, the sub’s gunnery officer, had been told to use his sword if anyone tried to escape. Motonaka had little experience wielding such a weapon and had already embarrassed himself by accidentally breaking its tip off when he stuck it into the deck. But when a Chinese deckhand tried escaping, Motonaka didn’t hesitate to slash him.24 When another Chinese deckhand jumped into the sea, the I-8’s crew were ready. Competing to see who could score the first bull’s-eye, they laughed as they fired into the water.25 A third prisoner, naked from the waist up, also dove overboard and was shot in the back. Blood could be seen spurting from the wound before the man disappeared in the waves.26 When his body failed to reappear, he was presumed dead.
It was clear that Ariizumi intended to kill his prisoners though the method he chose was a surprise. Assembling two rows of crewmen on either side of the I-8’s aft deck, Ariizumi armed them with guns, swords, and iron bars taken from the ship’s railing.27 He intended each one of the Tjisalak’s survivors to pass through this lethal gauntlet, where they would be shot, bayoneted, clubbed, or cut with a sword.28 It was a laborious method to be sure, but a more certain way of eliminating prisoners than strafing with a machine gun.29
Not all of Ariizumi’s crew liked the idea of killing prisoners. Motonaka thought it disgusting. Still, he had to comply: “A captain’s order was the same as God. If the captain made up his mind to [destroy his] sub, we had to obey.”30
Even the I-8’s dive control officer found Ariizumi’s behavior excessively “brutal.”31
The Tjisalak’s fifth engineer, hardly more than a boy, was struggling to contain himself when two of the I-8’s crewmen motioned for him to stand.32 After the three men disappeared behind the sail, there was a brief silence followed by a gunshot.
The Tjisalak’s first mate was next. He considered jumping overboard, but a quick death seemed preferable to drowning. After rounding the sail, he found a Japanese crewman waiting for him with a revolver. The first mate stopped, expecting to be executed, but the man waved him toward the stern instead. As he stood above the I-8’s churning propellers, a bullet was fired into his head. Moments after tumbling into the sea,33 the first mate disappeared from sight.
As the murderous gauntlet continued, Ariizumi went below deck to question the prisoners. The interviews took place in the I-8’s wardroom with Nakahara serving as translator. The first person Ariizumi interrogated was the Dutch freighter’s only female passenger, an American woman named Mrs. Brittan. Pretty with soft eyes and wavy brown hair, Mrs. Brittan remained calm throughout her interrogation. Nakahara recognized her accent as American, but it didn’t take long to determine that she held little intelligence value. Her chief novelty, being a woman, soon passed. When Ariizumi finished, Mrs. Brittan was sent forward for confinement.
Next was Captain Hen. When he entered the wardroom with his hands tied,34 he complained to Ariizumi that it was against international law for a captain to be confined in such a manner.
“Stupid fool!” Ariizumi shouted. “This is war!”35
Hen pleaded leniency for his crew,36 but it was too late. After two hours of slaughter, Ariizumi had sped up the attrition by tying the prisoners who remained on deck to a rope and ordering the I-8 submerged.37 It doesn’t take a man long to drown when he is tied to a submarine. The force of water easily squeezes the air from his lungs, and if that doesn’t kill him, the sub’s rapid descent will.
After Nakahara assisted in questioning several of the Tjisalak’s officers, he went to the forward crew compartment to see if Mrs. Brittan needed anything. When she asked for some water, Nakahara was happy to fetch it for her.38 Then they got to talking.
Mrs. Brittan was a former Red Cross worker who’d lived in Japan before the war. Nakahara, a Nisei born in Hawaii, listened sympathetically to her recollections. When Lieutenant Honda appeared informing him the American woman would have to be executed, Nakahara didn’t have the heart to look her in the eye. He suspected Mrs. Brittan already knew her fate, but that only made it more difficult.
Later that night, Lieutenant Honda came for Mrs. Brittan. She was remarkably composed given the situation. When asked whether she wanted a blindfold, she calmly declined. When her turn came to go on deck, she bowed to the crew and politely offered a “Sayonara.”39
It was dark as Ariizumi waited for the prisoners to emerge from deck hatch number three. The first to be executed was either the Tjisalak’s chief engineer or radio officer, who let out a bloodcurdling scream.40 Ariizumi had instructed his dive officer to kill the man, but he made such a botch of it that Ariizumi was forced to take over.41
The second prisoner to appear was Mrs. Brittan. Some crew accounts say Ariizumi used a sword; others claim it was a pistol.‖ Whatever the method, Ariizumi quickly dispatched the American woman, followed by another Tjisalak officer.
Captain Hen was last to be killed. Perhaps it was Ariizumi’s way of honoring a fellow captain, or perhaps it was just a matter of chance. But before the Tjisalak’s master could be executed, he jumped overboard.42 Since his body was never recovered, his escape amounted to a death sentence.
Later that evening Lt. (sg) Motohide Yanabe was heading to his bunk when Ariizumi called him into his cabin. Holding out his bloody sword, Ariizumi asked Yanabe to clean it for him. He could give it to an orderly, he explained, but Yanabe could keep a secret.43
Yanabe was washing Ariizumi’s sword when Nakahara entered the compartment. When he saw what Yanabe was doing, Nakahara made a disapproving grimace. Yanabe didn’t feel like explaining himself; after all he was under captain’s orders.44 When he finished, he washed his hands45 and left without saying anything.
Nakahara wasn’t surprised by what he saw. He’d heard Ariizumi had beheaded some of the prisoners.46 But Nakahara was angry. It had been wrong to massacre the survivors, and he wasn’t the only crewman to feel this way. Motonaka was also upset. The I-8’s gunnery officer was angry that people he’d shared a meal with had been executed. Killing a woman was especially heinous. Now Motonaka wanted off the I-8 at the first opportunity.47
Feelings about the massacre ran high among the crew. Even the sub’s
second in command, Lieutenant Honda, had difficulty talking about it.48 Clearly, they’d committed an atrocity, but under whose authority?
The answer came the next day when Ariizumi told Lieutenant Honda that the Naval General Staff had ordered all survivors of sunken merchant ships to be killed.49 Whether Ariizumi felt guilty or thought his senior officer deserved an explanation is impossible to know. What’s clear is that Ariizumi wanted his direct report to understand that he hadn’t ordered the prisoners killed on his own authority; he was carrying out the wishes of the high command. As the Tjisalak’s 98 victims had already learned, massacre was official policy.
Four of the Tjisalak’s officers, including the first mate and an Indian lascar, miraculously survived the slaughter. After swimming nearly eight hours, they found one of their ship’s damaged lifeboats and managed to stay afloat long enough to be rescued by a passing American Liberty ship. Though their ordeal was over, I-boat massacres in the Indian Ocean were not. Four SubRon 8 sub captains, three of whom would soon join the Sen-toku squadron, were determined to kill as many merchant mariners as possible.
Ariizumi’s reign of terror had only just begun.
* There are historical discrepancies over Ariizumi’s SubRon postings after he left the NGS. Ariizumi undoubtedly served as senior staff officer of SubRon 8 beginning in March 1942—it can be confirmed from multiple sources. However, Sato, who worked closely with Ariizumi, claims that his first SubRon posting after the NGS was SubRon 7, followed by SubRon 11 (but not SubRon 8). Nambu, on the other hand, says in his memoir that Ariizumi served in SubRons 8 and 2 (but not SubRon 11). The most reliable information suggests Ariizumi was a senior staff officer at SubRons 8 and 11.
† According to users.bigpond.net, Ariizumi held this position from 1937 until 1939. However, there is no corroborating evidence other than this reference.
‡ Ariizumi is believed to have graduated in 1923, though some sources indicate 1924.
§ Various accounts suggest between three and six crewmen were killed by the explosions.
‖ According to Nakahara during the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Ariizumi used a sword. Jiro Nakahara, statement, October 13, 1948, p. 5, Macmillan Brown Library (MBL). Additionally, Yanabe admitted cleaning Ariizumi’s bloody sword after the Tjisalak massacre. Motohide Yanabe, statement, Sugamo Prison, August 30, 1948, MBL. Nevertheless, some accounts cite a pistol being used to execute the high-priority prisoners, so it’s possible that both implements were used but on different prisoners.
CHAPTER 14
ARIIZUMI UNDER FIRE
THE I-8 SANK ANOTHER FREIGHTER AFTER THE TJISALAK. INEXPLICABLY, Ariizumi failed to kill the crew. It’s possible he was prevented from doing so by an Allied patrol. It’s also possible he gave the crew a free pass. If so, the reasons are unclear. But Ariizumi returned to his former methods on his second war patrol, when the I-8 encountered the SS Nellore, an Australian freighter out of Bombay.
It was June 29, 1944, when the I-8 sank the 6,942-ton Nellore with a combination of torpedoes and deck gun fire. Armed Japanese crewmen boarded one of her lifeboats to question survivors. After a half-hour interrogation, a European woman; a Javanese husband, wife, and their child; two French soldiers; and the Nellore’s gunner were taken prisoner.1 Seventy-nine of the Nellore’s 209 passengers and crew died in the sinking or were lost at sea.2 The rest either made it to Diego Garcia or were rescued. Of the seven prisoners taken aboard the I-8, only the Javanese woman and her son survived.3 The rest were never heard from again.
When Ariizumi sank the American Liberty ship Jean Nicolet three days later, it was a repeat of the Tjisalak massacre, right down to the murderous gauntlet and submerging with survivors tied to the deck. Ninety-nine passengers and crew were taken aboard the I-8. Everyone was killed save for 24 survivors who were later rescued by the Indian Navy.4 Of the three Americans taken prisoner, only one survived the war.5 Not long afterward the British began calling Ariizumi “the Butcher.”6
THE I-8’S CREW grew increasingly unhappy after the second patrol.7 Ariizumi warned them not to talk about the killings,8 but the wear of so many atrocities affected morale.
Lieutenant Honda, the boat’s executive officer, confided to an underling that he was “not happy regarding the actions taken by the CO.” It was a startling admission for a second in command. Honda obviously knew atrocities couldn’t be covered up. They’d “only cause trouble at a later date.”9
Ariizumi must have known his crew was distressed because he called Yanabe, the I-8’s engine room officer, to his quarters for a candid conversation. Yanabe was an Ariizumi loyalist. He was the first person the captain turned to when he needed his sword cleaned. Yanabe spent his time overseeing the sub’s engines, which meant he may not have been as involved with the massacres as other crewmen.
We have only Yanabe’s side of the story, given during the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. We know from his testimony though that he spoke openly to his captain about the crew’s distaste for the “atrocities.”10 What Yanabe says has the ring of truth about it, especially since Ariizumi tended to curb his temper when talking to a loyalist.
As Yanabe explained the crew’s discomfort, Ariizumi listened quietly. Once again the I-8’s captain confided that his hands were tied; he was acting on orders from the Naval General Staff. Yanabe took the incautious step of pressing further, always a danger given Ariizumi’s temper. He mentioned that U-boats had caused an international incident during World War I when massacring prisoners. The I-8 might face a similar uproar. Ariizumi already knew about this and told Yanabe he’d killed the prisoners only after a great deal of thought. Nevertheless, he realized he was in a difficult situation. Committing atrocities was “not good,” he admitted.11
Even “the Butcher” felt guilty.
THE MORALITY OF submarine warfare had been troubling the “five great powers” almost from the invention of the first submersible. Unrestricted warfare means attacking enemy merchant vessels without warning. (Warships were always fair game.) But it had not always been so. The first attempt to restrict submarines came shortly after World War I. Germany had targeted both merchant and passenger ships during the war, nearly defeating Great Britain. The British Admiralty pushed for the abolition of submarines during the 1921 International Conference on Naval Limitation in Washington, arguing they were immoral like poison gas.12 Since the United States and France objected to this position, no limitations were set.
U.S. Senator Elihu Root was one of the first to propose that a merchant ship’s passengers and crew be put in a place of safety (such as lifeboats) before a submarine sank a vessel. But the U.S. Navy opposed the Root Resolution, arguing it would limit the effectiveness of a legitimate weapon.13 The 1930 London Naval Conference tried reviving the resolution, including a “visit and search” policy for merchant ships. After much back-and-forth, Japan, the United States, and Britain finally agreed to Article 22, the first comprehensive ban on unrestricted submarine warfare. Though the intent was high-minded, the practical implications proved unworkable. Any commercial ship with a radio could call for help, thereby endangering an attacking submarine. Since it took time for a crew to evacuate their vessel, the sub was left dangerously exposed. Once war was declared, Article 22 went out the window.
Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. chief of naval operations sent a notice to all submarine commanders that they were now free to engage in “unrestricted warfare” against Japan.14 The United States had signed the 1930 London Naval Treaty outlawing such warfare, but given the devastation in Hawaii, it was quick to abandon the agreement.15 It also didn’t hurt that unrestricted warfare boosted the morale of sub crews.16
An argument can be made that forbidding unrestricted submarine warfare was impractical. Merchant crews were destined for slaughter as a by-product of war, be it from torpedoes, machine guns, or drowning. Ironically, the strategic focus of the Sixth Fleet was attacking warships, not merchant ships,17 while U.S. sub policy concentrated on eli
minating as many Pacific merchant vessels as possible. Yet it was Japan that would be held accountable for massacring crews, not the Allies, even though in a few notable cases like the USS Wahoo (SS 238), U.S. sub crews also killed survivors.*
But the question remains, who issued the order to massacre merchant crews in the Indian Ocean, and what did Japan hope to gain by it?
ARIIZUMI WASN’T LYING when he told his executive officer he’d been ordered to kill prisoners. The order had come from the Sixth Fleet via the Naval General Staff and can be traced to a meeting in Berlin between Adolf Hitler, his foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Japan’s ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima.18 Among the topics discussed during the January 1942 conference was Hitler’s belief that no matter how fast the United States built merchant ships, she would always be short of qualified seamen. The IJN knew that every merchant ship the Sixth Fleet sank would disrupt the Allied war effort, which is why Ariizumi’s mission was to destroy enemy supply lines in the Indian Ocean.19 Since a typical Liberty ship could be built in 42 days, it was impossible to sink enough of them to keep pace with production. That’s why Hitler sought to redress this imbalance. The result was an agreement not only to sink Allied freighters but to massacre their crews, in the interest of discouraging recruitment for the merchant marine. Hitler made it clear that since Germany and Japan were fighting for survival, there was no room for humanitarian practice. Oshima concurred and conveyed the conversation to the Japanese naval attaché.20 Two months later the Sixth Fleet issued the following directive:
DO NOT MERELY SINK ENEMY VESSELS, BUT POSITIVELY ANNIHILATE THE SURVIVORS. AS FAR AS CIRCUMSTANCES PERMIT, INTERN THE PRINCIPAL PERSONNEL OF SUNKEN ENEMY SHIPS AND ENDEAVOR TO OBTAIN INFORMATION.21
The order to eliminate survivors originated from the Navy General Staff in Tokyo and was verbally issued to the Sixth Fleet by an NGS officer around March 1943. In turn, the Sixth Fleet issued written orders to the commander of SubRon 8 in Penang later that same month.22 Ariizumi was already familiar with the order, since he’d served as SubRon 8’s senior staff officer previous to captaining the I-8.23 When he returned to Penang in February 1944, the order was still in effect though it had not been acted upon.
Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of World War II Page 12