NOAA to explore Japanese mini-sub
Wednesday marks the 75th Anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. To mark the anniversary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries will conduct a dive to explore two Japanese mini-subs that were sunk in the early hours of the attack;
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. naval vessels and aircraft on patrol outside Pearl Harbor spotted a partially submerged submarine trying to enter the harbor, but alerts were not immediately sent. Ninety minutes before Pearl Harbor was bombed by air, the destroyer USS Ward fired on the mini submarine, sinking it as it attempted to enter the harbor. The event marks the first U.S. shots fired and the country’s entry into World War II in the Pacific.
The second submarine to be explored during the dive disappeared that morning before the attack. It was discovered in shallow waters in 1951, raised by the U.S. Navy, and taken out to sea to be dumped in deeper water. In 1992, the University of Hawaii’s Undersea Research Laboratory rediscovered it. It has been periodically visited by the university’s submersibles, the last time in 2013.
The dive will be streamed to the public at this link December 7, 6:30 a.m. HST (8:30 a.m. PST, 11:30 a.m. EST). There are more related photos at this link.
Category: Historical
An interesting component of the attack and the response.
With the visit of Japan’s Prime Minister to Pearl Harbor to the site a few weeks from now it’s interesting to note that he will be the first Japanese leader to do so, as Obama was the first US president to visit Hiroshima. Maybe the best outcome for the whole world is the reminder of what happens when the world starts burning. Although in the middle east it’s hard to know if they’ll ever understand that message and we’ve certainly not sent it with the same level of determination we sent it to Germany and Japan.
Hopef he won’t be a dick like half of the jap tourists who visit the Memorial.
Okay, I know I typed “hopefully”…
That’s why it’s fun to “accidentally” bump into the rude little bastards…those fuckers are pretty rude wherever they go, especially in Vegas…I love “accidentally” bumping them in the slot machines or the elevator walls…
but I digress…
I had several encounters with Japanese folks of various ages both in Hawaii and in Hiroshima. In most instances I had something with the Eagle Globe and Anchor on me. When they saw that, they acted like sheep who can smell a wolf in the area, often backing up and circling each other. I must admit I enjoyed that. At least the Corps made an impression on them.
How ironic, considering that the only Japanese civilians to survive on Saipan were rescued from jap soldier by US Marines.
I’ve had more of a 50/50 experience. Roughly half of the ones I met were extremely nice, the other half absolute dickbags.
For example, every Japanese tourist at Universal Studios and most in Yosemite and at the USS Midway (both of which seem to be extremely popular with Japanese tourists) have been polite and cordial. Several Japanese ladies aboard the Midway have been extremely nice to my daughter–which surprised me a bit since she’s rather obviously mixed-race (though she leans more Asian appearance-wise) and Japan’s culture is nothing if not racist as fuck.
In Vegas? Total douchebags for no apparent reason. Hell, one of my cousins used to work at one of the larger Indian casinos around here, and she got insulted, slapped, spit on, and groped by rich japs on a regular basis until she finally quit.
In Hawaii, they were mostly shitbags with a few exceptions, though the ones at the Arizona Memorial were at least appropriately respectful that time. When my parents went there a few years earlier, the japs treated the Memorial like it was fucking Disneyland. The Sailors present were visibly pissed, and my Dad was ready to start the war all over again, only with more nukes this time.
On the other hand, one of my firefighters was dicking around on youtube last weekend, where he found and directed my attention to this chick the other day (safe for work, just mute it if you don’t speak Japanese):
https://youtu.be/h6vOlCk9E4k
Sora Aoi, a…uh…talented porn star who also smoked the first round of the Ninja Warrior challenge, and flashed her tits at the camera in the process (God bless her). So maybe they have given something good to the world.
Isn’t being in Vegas reason enough?
For that matter, isn’t shameless douchebaggery pretty much what Las Vegas was built for?
I mean, not trying to excuse anyone’s bad behavior, but saying someone went to Vegas and acted like a D-bag is like saying they went to Sea World and saw a fish. 😉
Japanese tourists treated Guam like a weekend in TJ.
And the locals hated them worse than they hated sailors, if that’s possible. Imagine getting taken from the dog track in Agana to the hotels in Tumor (about a 3 mile ride) and being charged $200. Happened to the tourists on a regular basis.
Korean tourists, IMO, are far worse, if that’s possible.
I heard a couple kids laughing the last time I was there.
To say it took great effort not to snap them in half would be putting it kindly, but the looks they got from most of the folks there was a good substitute.
Thanks Jonn, I can’t wait to watch this!
What about the one engaged by USS Monaghan (DD-354) on the west side of Ford Island? That one fired one torpedo at Monaghan that missed, then the destroyer rammed the minisub and dropped depth charges that made the kill. Because of the shallow water, Monaghan almost blew her own stern off with the depth charges. The blast lifted her stern out of the water, causing her screws to run away. The helmsman lost all control when she came back down, and Monaghan collided with a nearby barge.
Seems like this engagement gets forgotten because it took place right in the middle of the first air attack, but the minisub was found in the harbor in 2009. The article I read said that it still had one of its torpedos, so the guys on Monaghan definitely saved some lives.
The Seventh of December is especially significant to me, for exactly forty-nine years ago, at 1630 Hours Pacific Standard Time on Thursday 07 December 1967, in Portland, Oregon, I was sworn into the ranks of the United States Army.
At the same time and in the same place, there were a lot of other guys who were trying their best to keep from being inducted into the ranks.
I didn’t plan for it to happen that way, but nevertheless, I’ve always been proud of having entered the United States Army on Pearl Harbor Day!
Ain’t that neat?
Yup.
I raised my right hand and swore in on the 35th anniversary of the date we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima: August 6th, 1980. 😉
https://laststandonzombieisland.com/2016/12/05/new-uss-arizona-memorial-dedicated-at-university-of-arizona/
At least one university gets it right.
I’m shocked the special little U of A snowflakes and their 4th Avenue comrades haven’t declared it a micro-aggression and run off crying to their safe spaces. It’ll happen.
NOAA can save our money. Me? I don’t give a shit about two sunken mini-subs. I wonder if GEraldo will make a cameo.
Only if nothing is found there.
Some still have live torpedos aboard.
Perhaps Geraldo could be issued dive gear and a hammer, and thence test the sub for soft spots. The bow would require particular attention.
See if those old contact exploders are still dangerous or not, eh?
Over the Thanksgiving week I saw an interesting documentary about the USS Oklahoma. The Oklahoma was the only ship that capsized during the attacks and there have long been speculations as to why.
The theory this documentary advanced was that it had been hit by a torpedo from one of the mini-subs. Apparently the mini-sub torpedoes were much larger than the ones dropped by aircraft, and also being fired by the sub it would have hit the ship deeper, causing that side of the ship to flood which made it eventually capsize.
If true, it would have been the only “successful” use of the mini subs, as far as I know.
I saw one about that last year. The aerial photo of Battleship Row has something behind the torpedo wakes that certainly looks like it could be a periscope, but the overall quality of the image makes it impossible to say whether it’s that or just a photo artifact.
Also saw one where they digitally cleaned up the footage of Arizona’s explosion and ran it in slow-mo. You could see her hull lift out of the water, the foremast swing back and then collapse forward, see USS Vestal get rocked sideways hard, and see the 12-foot wave wash onto Ford Island. Horrifying.
the sub sunk by uss Monaghan was later raised {both crewman KIa]. The sub was later reburied as landfill at sub base, {see walter lord and stan cohen accout of ph attack}
I know they were the enemy and all, but taking something that size to take on Battleship Row and all the available guns- I don’t care whose side you’re on, that’s ballsy.
The WWII Japanese were accused of many things, but lacking balls wasn’t one of them. 😉
Just ask the “comfort women”.
Didn’t say anything but the gutsy part was admirable… y’all forgot to mention that we lost about 3% of the POWs the Nazis captured, and close to 60% of the ones the Japs captured.
“I know they were the enemy and all, but taking something that size to take on Battleship Row and all the available guns”
Sneak up on someone. Make that 10 someones, some of whom are sleeping and none of whom are armed, locked and loaded, and ready for you. You run through them, guns blazing. Does that take balls?
The Japanese committed a whole host of atrocities during the war, yes.
But if you’re going to cast aspersions on a crew that went into a pretty well defended harbor under shitty conditions, well, then you’ll have to accuse our own guys of the same, because we did it, more than once.
I do agree with you that it was a shitty thing to do, as war had not yet been declared. But for them to get in there in the first place took a definite set of skill and balls.
My objection is in paying homage to the Japanese for anything they did in WW II, other than dying. I will commend them for dying on the land, in the air, and under or on the sea. Beyond that, not.
Especially considering how shallow Pearl is once you get inside the breakwater.
Ballsy? So was building the Trojan horse, hiding men inside it, and making the citizens of Ilium, including Priam the king, think that you’d pulled out and gone home.
On the other hand, Ilium was sacked and burned about 7 times, maybe more.
Sneak attacks are dependent on the element of surprise. They are ambushes, plain and simple.
Yeah, it took balls to use Chinese babies for bayonet practice, not to mention raping girls and women and then murdering them just because. They got theirs but the stain remains.
Walking through hospitals bayoneting bedridden patients (Dutch West Indies), medical experimentation on people (China), bayoneting POWs (Bataan Death March), cannibalism of US POWs,…
Raping British nurses to death in Hong Kong, testing weaponized anthrax on Chinese civilian populations, firebombing cities, massacring the US Army hospital on Guam…
“Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japan.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
I was on Guam 81-84 and the place was overrun with Japanese tourists. To say they were rude, crude and socially unacceptable would be an understatement.
On the other hand …
My experience with the Japanese people involved those who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Other than 12-13 months on Okinawa, 70-71 and Guam 81-84.) Several dozen would come to Bethesda each year and be put through what we called the ‘whole body counter’ which was basically a very small room, about large enough for some sophisticated equipment, a reclining chair and one person. All six sides were covered with a foot or so thickness of lead bricks. The idea was to totally eliminate all ambient radiation. (Not possible to do, but close.) The individual would be placed in the reclining chair (very comfortable) for a period of about an hour and the geewhiz instruments would detect the residual radiation remaining in the survivor. Prior to placement, the individual would strip and put on a sterile gown. Each of the several dozens would have patterns of the original clothing embedded on the surface of their skin. They were not hesitant to strip in front of me and put on the sterile gown. Hard to believe such unassuming people were capable of the atrocities during the war. Anyway, the short half-life isotopes are long gone but some isotopes have half lives of thousands of years and are easily detected. The WBC room was encased in probably 50,000 pounds of lead bricks. Very interesting. I understand the studies are still under way.