It is probably impossible to overestimate the cultural and historic significance of the sunken Japanese "midget" submarine found off Pearl Harbor in late August, the product of the dogged scientific spirit of the University of Hawaii's Undersea Research Lab (HURL). Sought for more than a decade by HURL, the tiny craft that turned up in the last few minutes of the team's final search of the season bears not just the scars of the first encounter of the Pacific War but possibly the remains of the war's first casualties as well.
A shell hole in the submarine's sail indicates the gunnery excellence of the crew of the destroyer Ward (DD-139) and the accuracy of their action report. The 3-inch shell punched through without exploding, and one shot likely killed the skipper, the first casualty of World War II in the Pacific.
But who was the skipper? A careful forensic examination of the interior may yield the answer, even if no physical remains exist to be studied. It is possible, by deduction and elimination, to identify this first casualty outside the realm of forensics, however.
The ko-hyoteki-class "midget" submarines were given hull numbers in the "Ha," or third-string, series of Imperial Navy submarines. The submarines used in the attack were from the first 20 Ha-boats built, so they could have carried hull numbers from Ha-3 to Ha-20 (the first two were test boats). These numbers are apparent only from builders' plates inside the hull, so the Ha number of this particular boat will not be known until she is reopened.
The boats had no assigned names but were referred to by their relationship with the "mother" submarines that carried them to their launch points. These were submarines of the I-16 class—large, first-string boats—and the midget submarine assigned to each was called "tou," or boat. For example, the midget submarine assigned to the I-16 was called I-16tou," or "I-16's boat." This is as good a method as any for identifying the midget submarines and the crews of each tou. The attack force at Pearl Harbor comprised five tous, one each from the I-16, I-18, I-20, I-22, and I-24.
The I-24tou was captured the day after the attack; crewman Kiyoshi Inagaki was killed, and skipper Kazuo Sakamaki was a prisoner of war. This submarine, with hull number Ha-19, is the best-known of the midget submarines, having toured the United States during the war and subsequently been put on display in Texas.
The I-22tou entered Pearl Harbor and engaged in a running fight with destroyers to the northwest of Ford Island before being rammed and depth-charged. She was raised after the attack and used as landfill at Pearl Harbor, with the crew supposedly on board. We know it was the submarine of Naoji Iwasa, the commander of the group, as his muddy and tattered sleeve, with his rank on it, was pulled from the mangled wreck and returned quietly to his family in Japan after the war. This artifact is now on display at Yasukuni Shrine. Iwasa's crewman was Naokichi Sasaki.
The I-18tou—skippered by Shigemi Furuno and crewed by Shigenori Yokohama—was depth-charged outside Pearl Harbor and came to rest in Keehi Lagoon. She was discovered by Navy divers in 1960 and raised. The bow section, with intact (and still-dangerous) torpedoes, was unbolted and dumped at sea and has yet to be rediscovered. The rest of the submarine was shipped to Japan, where a new bow was fabricated. While cleaning her out, Japanese technicians discovered a shoe linked to Furuno. She is on display at the Maritime Self-Defense Force school in Eta Jima.
In the I-16tou were skipper Masaji Yokoyama and crewman Sadamu Uyeda. On the evening of 7 December 1941, Yokoyama radioed back to Japan that the attacks were carried out successfully. Much to the chagrin of Japanese naval aviators, Imperial Japanese Navy propagandists credited Yokoyama with sinking the battleship Arizona (BB-39). Scientific photographic evidence uncovered recently shows what appears to be a midget submarine inside Pearl Harbor, firing torpedoes at Battleship Row (see "Pearl Harbor: Attack from Below," December 1999 Naval History magazine, pages 16-23). On the other hand, the light cruiser St. Louis (CL-49) reported being attacked by torpedoes just outside Pearl Harbor. Wherever the I-16tou made her final stand, the submarine remains missing. The Navy will not allow searches of Pearl Harbor.
This makes the I-20tou, with Akira Hiro-o at the helm and Yoshio Katayama at the controls, the submarine sunk by the USS Ward an hour before the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor.
Hiro-o, the first casualty of the Pacific War, was also, at age 22, the youngest of the submariners.
His grim dedication was masked by an ebullient, joking nature. As he was boarding the midget submarine for the last time, he called out to the crew of the I-24: "The ice cream in Honolulu is especially fine. I will bring you some when I come back!" The crew laughed, and Hiro-o added, "No, really! I'm looking forward to landing on Oahu. I promise the Americans some hot action with my sword!"
The I-20's duty station was the one closest to Waikiki, and she launched at 0257, 7 December 1941.
Rediscovered 61 years later, she is in remarkably good shape, scoured clean by fierce, sand-laden currents. Unlike the Civil War's Confederate boilerplate submarine Hunley or the recently recovered pieces of the ironclad Monitor, which were filled with anaerobic silt that helped preserve organic elements inside, the I-20tou is open to the sea. And in all likelihood, nothing remains of Hiro-o and Katayama, except perhaps some uniform items. Even if deep-sea scavengers could not gain entry, the submarine was filled with batteries that would have seeped acid, and sea-water mixing with oil creates a corrosive cocktail, as well.
Even though the submarine lies well within U.S. territorial waters, she remains the property of Japan. Given the cultural imperative to bring home all Japanese who have fallen in foreign lands, it is inconceivable that there will not be at least discussions over raising the vessel, which could be done relatively easily, given current technology. She would have to be placed immediately in an 80,000-gallon freshwater tank, kept at 100 Centigrade, and subjected to cathodic protection, driving out the chlorides embedded in the steel and replacing them with more stable materials.
This process requires a special, temporary tank, perhaps built on the grounds of the Arizona Memorial Visitors Center, and the cathodic protection likely would take more than a year. In that time, working in the shallow, chilly water of the holding tank, archaeologists could study and clean the exterior, and explore the interior with endoscopes and X-ray mapping techniques.
According to James Delgado, director of the Vancouver Maritime Center in Canada and former underwater archaeologist for the U.S. National Park Service, Japanese and U.S. maritime archaeologists have been looking for a World War II project they can collaborate on for some time. "This would be perfect, small-scale, and do-able. And jeez, talk about putting the war to rest, once and for all," he said. "Conservation of the greatest conflict in Pacific history has to be the responsibility of all nations, not just the winners. No one owns history. This would be the ideal joint project."
Any remains or personal items, of course, would be returned with appropriate memorialization to Japan. As for the submarine herself, although she is the property of the Japanese government, her rightful place is in Pearl Harbor. After 61 years, maybe Hiro-o and Katayama can reach Oahu's shores.
Mr. Burlingame is a writer and editor for The Honolulu Star-Bulletin in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the author of the Naval Institute Press book, Advance Force Pearl Harbor (2001).