Dive! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific Read online

  They worked throughout that night and into the next day without even stopping to sleep. No one knew what might happen next—was the surprise attack just the beginning? Rumors flew fast and furious. “We were told numerous times that the Japanese had landed,” Martin recalled. “Then that rumor would be quelled, and then they’d say the Japanese had landed in another island. Then we’d be informed of the rumor that the Japanese were going to attack again in the morning.”

  Martin was kept busy: helping to put out small fires, assessing damage to hangars, and hauling away damaged planes. Crews searched the wreckage for survivors. “Every now and then, we would come across somebody who was pinned in the wreckage. In fact, one time—it was three days later—there was a plane on the end of the runway; we found out there was a pilot in it who had been injured and trapped in it for three days.”

  That was the beginning of fifteen-year-old Martin Matthews’s war. He probably could have petitioned to get out of the Navy because of his age. Instead he stuck with it. In an interview nearly forty years later, Martin reflected that being at Pearl Harbor that day had only solidified his determination to serve.

  “I knew then that even if I had to wait the two years that I still would join up,” he said, “because it was my country.”

  Crew abandoning the damaged USS California around ten o’clock on Sunday morning.

  On the USS California (BB-44), twenty-year-old Musician First Class Warren G. Harding had reason to be grateful to sailors like Martin Matthews who kept up rescue efforts long after Japanese planes disappeared from the sky.

  Like Martin, Warren was off duty on Sunday, December 7, with plans for a picnic in Honolulu. That morning, though, Warren missed the first “liberty launch,” the boat that took sailors ashore. The delay saved his life. Later he learned everyone on it had been killed.

  “ ‘So I leaned against the rail and waited … I looked over to the right because I heard this drone, a ROAR-R-R-R-R. It was a plane diving. I thought: “My goodness, this is Sunday! Who practices dive-bombing on Sunday?” I’m looking up in the air, and immediately I spotted that red ball. I said, “That’s a Zero!”

  “ ‘I saw it and recognized the red ball, and just like that I saw the bomb being released. It burst on the runway on Ford Island…. So I headed, automatically, to my battle station. That’s all I thought—get to my battle station.’ ”

  Warren raced four decks below to his station, called repair fore port (on the port, or left, side of the forward part of the ship), and grabbed his headphones. His job would be to relay orders coming from repair central. “ ‘All at once I heard POW, the first explosion. It was an extraordinary feeling. When you fire a broadside on a battleship, it feels like the battleship is picked up in the water, then it kind of shakes and then settles back down.’ ”

  The ship began to list. Water and oil seeped under the nearest watertight door. Warren’s radio crackled to life. While the other repair stations were ordered to abandon ship, Warren and six others were told to maintain watertight integrity and stay put. Someone would be back to get them. And so they waited. The smoke got so thick one man passed out. Minutes ticked by.

  “ ‘Nobody panicked because I don’t think we realized the full impact of what had happened. We couldn’t believe our ship was sinking,’ said Warren. ‘We could still breathe good, fresh air, and we could see the lights were on. There were no bullets flying around, no shrapnel. But the ship kept sinking down….

  “ ‘Time went on. Some guys went to sleep. There was a guitar and an electrician who knew how to play. He started strumming, and we started singing. We sang and we sang. Hours passed. Finally we ran out of songs and just sat there.’ ”

  Warren could no longer reach repair central on his headphones. When the water rose over their legs, the sailors concluded that they’d been forgotten. They chose the smallest man to crawl into an air duct to inch his way through it up to the boat deck to try to get help. And then they waited some more.

  Finally, about three in the afternoon, they heard a knock. Rescuers opened the watertight door from the outside, and the men escaped. On deck, Warren was so shocked by what he saw that his legs gave way. “ ‘Smoke and fire were still on the water around the California. There were dead bodies in the water and bodies hanging over the gun turrets…. After a while I got up my strength and went over the starboard side. I crawled down and swam to shore. There was oil all over me, but I was alive. I crawled under a small building up on piers and just laid there until it started to get dusk….

  “ ‘There was no sleep at all that night. The next day we went back and started digging bodies out of the California…. I helped … and then I slipped off to check my trombone to see if it was all right. A clothes locker had fallen over on the trombone and had protected it.’ ”

  Later, when the California was in dry dock for repairs, Warren got his first real look at the damage and realized how lucky he’d been. “ ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. I almost fainted. You could have driven a Mack truck through either one of the torpedo holes, and I was in the place right between them.’ ”

  In an interview on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the attack, Warren said, “ ‘There was a dent in it, but I still have the trombone today. I haven’t played it in almost thirty years, but it’s in my bedroom, on a stand. I keep it shined. I shine it every December 7 and when I go back tonight, it’ll get its shine.’ ”

  “Probably no man in Japan more earnestly wanted to avoid war with the United States than the one who planned the Pearl Harbor attack,” wrote historian Gordon Prange, who spent nearly forty years researching the assault.

  That man was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet. Yamamoto was no stranger to the United States: Educated at Harvard, he spoke English and had lived in Washington, DC. Yamamoto had a keen appreciation of America’s military and production capabilities. Ultimately he believed that Japan was outmatched and could not win a war against the United States.

  However, in the years leading up to the war, the tide was against Yamamoto and other moderate voices. Conflict became increasingly likely after Japan joined in a military alliance with the Axis powers Germany and Italy in the September 1940 Tripartite Pact. World War II pitted the Axis powers against the Allies: Great Britain, France, and the United States, among others.

  Once war seemed inevitable, Yamamoto believed Japan’s best chance for victory would be to deal a crushing blow at the very outset. If the Japanese could destroy the US Navy’s main fleet at Pearl Harbor, they could then launch assaults on strategic British and American military bases in Singapore and the Philippines. With the Philippines secured, Japan would be positioned to expand southward to Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies and other islands, eventually achieving dominance throughout the entire Pacific region. Destroying the US fleet at Pearl Harbor had another advantage: It would help keep the sea lanes open so that Japanese oil tankers and freighters could move freely, delivering fuel and supplies to Japanese airfields and military outposts on the islands it conquered.

  Pearl Harbor, with Ford Island in the center, shown in October 1941, just months before the attack.

  In January 1941, nearly a year before the December 7 surprise attack, Yamamoto wrote that the Imperial Japanese Navy must “ ‘fiercely attack and destroy the U.S. main fleet at the outset of the war, so that the morale of the U.S. Navy and her people’ ” would sink so low it could not recover. In other words, Japan wanted to win the war on the very first day.

  That didn’t happen.

  The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 and wounded more than 1,000 people. Eighteen vessels, including battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, were sunk or heavily damaged; Navy planes on Ford Island suffered heavy losses.

  The surprise assault did give the Imperial Japanese Navy a distinct advantage. Even before the attack, Japan boasted thirty-five heavy and light cruisers, compared to twenty-four in the combined US Pacific and Asiatic Flee
ts; Japan had 111 destroyers, while the United States had 80; it had ten aircraft carriers, while the US had only three; and it had ten battleships, while all eight of America’s battleships at Pearl Harbor had suffered damage. Japan also boasted sixty submarines, more than the fifty-one subs the US had operating in the Pacific.

  Despite these advantages, the attack at Pearl Harbor did not result in a quick, decisive victory for the Japanese. Yamamoto and other Japanese officials underestimated the crucial role that the submarines of the US Navy would be asked to play in the conflict ahead: to decimate Japanese ships and cut off the lines of supply.

  Nor did the attack at Pearl Harbor shatter America’s morale. Just the opposite.

  The next day, Monday, December 8, 1941, the US Congress declared war on Japan. Three days later, America formally declared war on Germany and Italy.

  Japanese military planners had underestimated the American people’s resolve. The surprise attack galvanized the country into war. Japan had made another miscalculation as well: overlooking the potential impact that submarines might have in the war. The four submarines at Pearl Harbor that day had escaped damage; no bombs fell on the submarine base itself, nor were supplies of torpedoes and fuel damaged in any way.

  One reason Japan may have discounted the importance of submarines was that in 1939, when World War II broke out in Europe, there were only fifty-five boats in the small American submarine fleet. Yet those numbers had been increasing as American military planners anticipated being drawn into war. The US Congress had authorized funds for the construction of more ships, including submarines. By December 1941, the US Navy could boast 111 submarines, with more scheduled for construction. Of these, 60 boats were part of the Atlantic Fleet operating in the Atlantic Ocean and other European waters. (The fleet also included eight battleships and four aircraft carriers, as well as cruisers and destroyers.)

  During World War II, the Atlantic submarines (which are beyond the scope of this book) were charged with defending the US East Coast and the Panama Canal and, in collaboration with the British, raiding enemy shipping. They were also tapped to defend supply ships bringing food and munitions to Great Britain against German submarines, called U-boats.

  At the start of the war, fifty-one US submarines were based in the Pacific. Twenty-nine were attached to the Navy’s Asiatic Fleet (which included both surface ships and submarines), which was based in the Philippines. The other twenty-two were part of the Pacific Fleet housed at Pearl Harbor Naval Submarine Base. Only four happened to be at Pearl Harbor the day of the attack, and all escaped damage.

  What role were the Pacific submarines expected to play? To understand that, it’s helpful to take a look at the big picture and review the major combatants in World War II. The Allies were led by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. This faction also included France, Poland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with other countries joining the effort after 1941.

  The Allied nations were pitted against the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan, which had formed close ties in the 1930s. While all three pursued aggressive actions toward other countries and were opposed to the Allies, they did not mount a combined war effort.

  America’s overall strategy, according to naval historian Theodore Roscoe, called for “a concentration of effort to defeat Nazi Germany while the Japanese offensive was contained by a holding action in the Pacific. This strategic plan recognized Germany as the most formidable Axis power and the Atlantic threat as the one more immediately menacing to the security of the United States.

  “Defeat of Japan was considered inevitable once the Nazis were beaten, whereas a victory over Japan did not assure defeat of Germany, were the Nazis able to crush Britain and Russia in the meantime,” wrote Roscoe. “This meant winning the Battle of the Atlantic while American naval forces in the Pacific went on the defensive.”

  This would be a two-ocean war for the United States Navy. And on December 7, 1941, it was clear that the battle for control of the vast Pacific region had already begun.

  The call to action came that same day, only six hours after the Pearl Harbor attack. The Navy Department issued an order overturning an international agreement that restricted the actions submarines could take against nonmilitary ships, including merchant ships such as oil tankers or supply freighters.

  The order read: “Execute Unrestricted Air and Submarine Warfare against Japan.”

  World War II in the Pacific was a complicated conflict involving many nations and territories. To help understand the overall goals of Japan, it’s helpful to turn to esteemed naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, who proposed to his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the spring of 1942 that he write a maritime history of the war—a project that would involve Morison going to sea to be an eyewitness to battles and operations.

  The result was a fifteen-volume masterwork, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Though Morison wrote in great detail, he also understood the value of being able to simplify and summarize complex historical events. Below is his summary of the Japanese war plan.

  First, prior to a declaration of war, destruction of the United States Pacific Fleet and the British and American air forces on the Malay Peninsula and Luzon [the Philippines].

  Second, while the British and American Navies were decimated and disorganized, a quick conquest of the Philippines, Guam, Wake, Hong Kong, Borneo, British Malaya (including Singapore) and Sumatra.

  Third, when these were secure, the converging of Japanese amphibious forces on the richest prize, Java, and a mop-up of the rest of the Dutch Islands.

  Fourth, an intensive development of Malayan and Indonesian resources in oil, rubber, etc.; and, to secure these, establishment of a defensive perimeter … With these bases the Japanese Navy and air forces could cut all lines of communication between Australia, New Zealand, and the Anglo-American powers, which would then be forced to sue for peace.

  Fifth and finally, Japan would proceed completely to subjugate China.

  Had this ambitious plan succeeded, Morison noted, over half the world’s population would have been under Japanese control.

  “This scheme of conquest was the most enticing, ambitious and far-reaching in modern history, not excepting Hitler’s,” he concluded. “It almost worked, and might well have succeeded but for the United States Navy.”

  Like young Martin Matthews, submariner Joseph Melvin Eckberg was on liberty that first Sunday in December. However, Mel Eckberg, known as Mel to his wife, Marjorie, and as Eck to fellow submariners, wasn’t anywhere near Pearl Harbor but thousands of miles away in the Philippine Islands, which had been owned by the United States since 1898 and was in transition to becoming an independent nation.

  Cavite Navy Yard, Philippines, in October 1941, before war broke out.

  Mel Eckberg was one of thousands of Americans in the Philippines at the time. The US had pledged to protect the Philippines in the event of conflict with Japan, and had built a substantial military presence in the islands. The Navy’s Asiatic Fleet of surface ships and submarines was based in the Philippines. In addition, General Douglas MacArthur was in charge of US Army Ground Forces, the Philippine Army, and military fighter planes there.

  On that Monday, Mel Eckberg and his crewmates were waiting for their submarine, the USS Seawolf (SS-197), to undergo routine maintenance at Cavite Naval Station (sometimes called the Cavite Navy Yard) on Manila Bay in the port town of Cavite, south of the capital city of Manila.

  Due to the time difference, with Manila being about eighteen and a half hours—nearly a day—ahead of Honolulu, the news about Pearl Harbor didn’t reach the Philippines until the early hours of December 8. Nothing had interfered with Eck’s free weekend; in fact, he’d gone out on the town to celebrate a reunion with an old shipmate named Jim Riley.

  It wasn’t until Monday morning, when Eck and Jim stopped by a local café for some much-needed coffee, that they noticed an unexpected tension in the atmos
phere—something seemed to be wrong.

  “ ‘What’s the matter with everybody? They’re jumping around like a bunch of jitterbugs,’ ” Jim remarked.

  A young Filipino waiter broke the news: Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Eck glanced out the window. Already he could see people rushing along with grim and anxious faces. Everybody—American and Filipino alike—feared that Japan would take aim at the Philippines next. They were right to be afraid.

  In an instant, Eck and Jim had scrambled to their feet and dashed outside, where a cab screeched to a stop in front of them.

  “ ‘Going to the docks, sailor?’ ” the driver asked.

  They climbed in and the cab sped away.

  “The port was as busy as a beehive with submarines,” remembered Eck. “Two of them, the Sealion and Seadragon, our sister ships, were undergoing a complete yard overhaul. That meant removing all engines, tearing down the electrical systems, and then rebuilding the ship—a six-to-eight-weeks job.”

  Seawolf’s maintenance would have to wait. Eck hurried on board, passing workers busily loading the submarine with food and supplies. A little later, as he stood on deck for his turn at watch, Eck still found it hard to believe what he’d heard, especially on such a lovely tropical day. “The air was mild, the sun shone. War seemed impossible. Suddenly, in toward Manila, a light began blinking.”

  It was, Eck realized, a searchlight signal being broadcast from the old, faithful USS Canopus (AS-9), one of the submarine tenders serving the Asiatic Fleet. (As its name implies, a submarine tender is a ship that has been specially equipped to serve, or “tend to,” submarines, an especially important role since subs have limited storage space to carry food, fuel, or torpedoes.)

  “I read the flashes, and with each word my blood pressure shot up,” the veteran submariner recalled. It was a dispatch from Admiral Thomas Hart to the men and officers of each ship: