December 7, 1985

Midget Sub A Strange Pearl Harbor Tale

Dented Sub
The dented sub sits on concrete blocks in the yard of the Lighthouse and Military Museum at Key West.

The strangest reminder of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, exactly 44 years ago today, rests all but forgotten on a Key West side street.

It is a midget submarine named "C" - a testimonial to the inept courage of Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, the first Japanese prisoner of World War II.

The Japanese planned a three-pronged assault on the U.S. Pacific fleet at anchor.  In between two air strikes, five tiny subs were to each fire two 18-inch torpedoes at battleships and cruisers.

Built especially for the Pearl Harbor operation, the little subs carried a two-man crew.  The armed subs each weighed 59 tons, were 79 feet long and could cruise for 55 minutes.  They were propelled by counter-rotating twin screws powered by lead-acid batteries.

The underwater midgets, A through E, were each strapped to a mother sub and carried within 10 miles of Pearl Harbor.  The clamps were released at 6:30 a.m.  Sunday, one and a half hours before the first wave of carrier planes.

Enemy sub A had ballast trouble and could not submerge.  A patrol plane spotted the vessel cruising slowly and alerted the destroyer U.S.S. Ward.

A salvo from the Ward's 4-inch guns hit sub A squarely and sank it in 1,200 feet of water.  The vessel is still there with the bodies of its two crewmen inside.

Lt.  Cmdr. W. W. Outerbridge, skipper of the Ward, radioed an urgent message to command headquarters: "We have attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges upon a submarine operating in defensive sea area.  Stand by for further messages."  The time was 6:45, an hour and 10 minutes before the aerial attack.

Meanwhile, Sakamaki in sub C also was having trouble with his ballast.  When released from the mother sub, the thin-skinned sub headed for the bottom, nose first.  The young skipper succeeded in reversing his engines and hacking up to the surface just before reaching crush depth.

The reverse maneuver disoriented Sakamaki.  It was several minutes before he discovered he was going out to sea instead of toward Oahu.  He swung around and proceeded on course at periscope depth, homing on neon signs along Waikiki Beach.

Sakamaki's mission was to slip around Pearl Harbor's antisubmarine net and up the channel to fire on ships tied up at Ford Island.  Through his periscope he spotted the Ward racing to defend the harbor entrance.  Sakamaki threw his sub into its full 19-knot speed.

The Ward detected Sakamaki's periscope and hurled five depth charges at it.  The salvo was a near-miss, but the blast knocked the Japanese crewmen unconscious for several minutes.  Coming to, Sakamaki checked his bearings.  Miraculously he had evaded the Ward and slipped past the net while blacked out!

Billowing clouds of black smoke over the harbor told Sakamaki that the sneak aerial attack was under way.  He had difficulty seeing because the depth charges near his vessel ruptured some of the batteries.  Acid fumes made his eyes water and breathing painful.

On charged sub C, its commander squinting through bleary eyes and waves of nausea.  He did not notice that he had wandered out of the ship channel.  At full speed, he rammed an underwater reef.  The impact jammed the two torpedoes: but, again a miracle, they did not explode.

Reverse thrusts finally freed the sub but drained the batteries.  Sakamaki coaxed his vessel forward, only to run onto another reef.  To conserve power, he and his crewman began shifting ballast bars aft.  Both men were repeatedly shocked by spilled acid as they crawled along the sub's narrow walkway, dragging the heavy ballast.  An hour of such labor was required to free the sub once more.

By now it was past noon, and the attack was over.  The bulk of America's Pacific fleet was burning fiercely or lying on the harbor bottom.

Nevertheless, Sakamaki determined to ram one of the few ships still afloat.  The second grounding had broken the rudder.  Sub C circled helplessly.  The two Japanese became dizzy and shut off the motor.  Still submerged, they prepared to suffocate.  They succumbed to intermittent periods of stupor as their tiny prison drifted on the outgoing tide.

Hours later, Sakamaki roused himself for a look through the periscope.  It was dark so he surfaced and opened the hatch.  Revived by the fresh air, he turned on the motor.  He barely made headway, but it was enough to run sub C onto a reef for the last time.

Sakamaki realized that the secret mini sub now as likely to he captured.  An explosive charge had been built into the vessel for just such an emergency.  Sakamaki lit the fuse and the two crewmen jumped into pounding surf.  Sakamaki struggled ashore at Waimanalo Bay, 50 miles from Pearl Harbor.  His crewman drowned.

The self-destruct charge aboard sub C failed to detonate, undoubtedly because the fuse was drenched with battery acid.  In the morning, a beach patrol picked up Sakamaki, too weak to run.

Sakamaki remained a prisoner for the entire war, racked with feelings of guilt for failing his mission.  Upon returning to Japan he was ridiculed for failure.  Eventually he found a job with Toyota in its Brazil agency.

Mini sub C was repaired by the U.S. Navy and taken to the mainland to be exhibited in War Bond drives.

Sub B got inside Pearl Harbor and fired both its "fish."  The first missed a seaplane tender and blew up a pier.  The second torpedo also missed and exploded harmlessly on the beach.

Sub E was never found.  It is assumed to have been sunk by four destroyers which that day lobbed depth charges on a small target.

Sub D was discovered in 1960 near the harbor entrance by a Navy diver.  The torpedoes were still in place, but there was no trace of the crew.  This sub was returned to Japan at the request of the government.  The vessel is on display at the Japanese Naval Academy.

The dented sub C sits on concrete blocks in the yard of the Lighthouse and Military Museum at Key West.  It is a stone's throw from the abandoned U.S. Navy Submarine Station where this writer once helped train sonar operators to detect and destroy Japanese subs.

Sakamaki would he amazed.

Author: Lindsey Williams