Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of World War II (17 page)

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 hands
⁴⁵
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.

T
HE
I-8
SANK ANOTHER FREIGHTER AFTER THE
T
JISALAK
. I
NEXPLICABLY
, 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