Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of World War II (18 page)

T
HE
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.

T
HE 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 eliminating 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?

A
RIIZUMI 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:

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.

Although Ariizumi was not involved in formation of the policy, he was determined to set a good example. When he was still an NGS staff officer, he’d been overheard saying, “To win a war, you must exhaust [the enemy’s] human resources.”
²⁴
The new policy was hardly a departure from his own thinking.

Not all sub captains thought this way, of course. Of the nine captains in SubRon 8, five refrained from massacring merchant crews. Of the four captains who did kill survivors, three (Ariizumi, Kusaka, and Shimizu) would go on to oversee, or captain,
Sen-toku
subs. Nambu and Ohashi would be the only
Sen-toku
captains with no blood on their hands.

At least one Penang-based sub captain was reprimanded for being too lenient in his treatment of survivors.
²⁵
Given Japan’s historical animosity toward POWs, Ariizumi’s disdain for taking prisoners should come as no surprise. Though it doesn’t excuse his actions, which were heinous, it does explain them. It wasn’t just a case of Ariizumi following orders; he was adhering to a code he’d been raised to believe in, a code that hundreds of years of history reinforced and that his education and training had taught him to serve. That’s why Ariizumi was the first to carry out the order more than a year after it was issued.

Japanese treatment of POWs may have been barbaric, but it wasn’t crazy. It not only had historical precedent—it had its own
indisputable logic as well. If killing merchant crews meant fewer men for supply lines, then so be it. Of course, the
Tjisalak
survivors had no difficulty differentiating between the horror of drowning from a torpedo attack and being bludgeoned to death aboard a Japanese sub. The resulting hue and cry confirmed as much.

The British government was first to protest. In a letter to the Japanese Foreign Ministry dated June 5, 1944, the British demanded “immediate instructions to prevent the repetition of similar atrocities and to take disciplinary action against those responsible.”
²⁶

The British protest was delivered to Japan’s foreign minister by the Swiss foreign minister in Tokyo. No reply was received; nor was anything heard in response to a follow-up message.
²⁷
On July 28 the Dutch government also complained about the
Tjisalak
’s sinking.
²⁸
Finally, two months after the Swiss foreign minister had sent a reminder, the Japanese Foreign Ministry issued an official response.
²⁹

British, Dutch, and American protests eventually forced an inquiry into the massacres, resulting in a Kafkaesque investigation where the Japanese military conducted interviews about a policy it had sanctioned and now denied. When the investigation eventually
reached SubRon 8, Ariizumi was called in for questioning. Asked about the massacres, he could hardly disguise his anger. The duplicity of being questioned for something he’d been ordered to do so sickened him, he refused to answer questions and turned his head away in disgust.
³¹

Ariizumi may have been nicknamed “the Butcher,” but his failure to answer questions didn’t harm his career. A few weeks after the
I-8
returned to Yokosuka, he was given the most important assignment of his life: command of the
Sen-toku
squadron.

Meanwhile, his future nemesis, the USS
Segundo
, was heading his way.

T
HE
P
ORTSMOUTH
N
AVY
Y
ARD WAS BITTERLY COLD WHEN THE
USS
Segundo
launched stern first into the icy waters of the Piscataqua River. Richard “Fox” Binkley, seaman first class, stood on deck that winter’s day along with 20-plus crew members assigned to the
Segundo
’s fitting out.
¹
It was so freezing outside, it must have seemed like the wife of the assistant secretary of the treasury was taking her sweet time breaking a champagne bottle across the bunting-draped bow. But finally the air horns screeched their jubilant message, and the half-finished sub began moving down the building ways.

Somewhere a naval band played “Anchors Aweigh” as Binkley, locked in salute, stood firm on the
Segundo
’s deck. The sub moved amazingly fast for an object weighing 2,500 tons. Nevertheless, Binkley rode her all the way down into the slack tide, ending in a roiling ocean of foam. It was February 5, 1944, and the
Segundo
was nearing completion.

The USS
Segundo
(SS 398) was a Balao-class submarine. Named for a fish in the cavalla family that includes yellow jack and pompano, she was one of 44 Balao-class subs built by the Portsmouth Navy Yard during the war. After Congress approved a massive fleet expansion in 1940, Portsmouth had found itself at the center of the greatest sub construction program in history. U.S. submarine forces had come a long way since the start of war, and the navy was now producing boats at a record pace.

Portsmouth built more subs during World War II than any shipyard in America. New London’s Electric Boat Company came next, followed by Mare Island Navy Yard in San Francisco, the Manitowoc
Shipbuilding Company in Wisconsin, the Cramp Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia, and the Boston Navy Yard. Still, none compared to Portsmouth.

Portsmouth built a total of 80 subs during the war, more than half Balao-class.
²
Electric Boat may have produced better-finished subs, but Portsmouth subs had the latest equipment that captains hungered for.
³
Portsmouth subs also had a more angular silhouette than those of Electric Boat. Edward Beach, author of
Run Silent, Run Deep
and a sub commander himself, described Portsmouth boats as looking like “sleek, streamlined monsters.”
⁴