The Limits of Hate: Japanese Prisoners on US Submarines during the Second World War

The war in the Pacific has been widely represented as a ‘race war’ in which both sides manifested an unstinting hatred toward the other. In John Dower's memorable phrase, the conflict is perceived as a ‘war without mercy’, with the treatment of captives in particular often viewed as indicative of the mindset of the combatants. ¹ The Japanese treatment of POWs is notorious; over a quarter of US and British prisoners held by the Japanese died in captivity, compared to about 4 per cent of those held by the Germans. ² At the same time, hatred and mistrust of the enemy was deeply ingrained in Allied forces. That many US combat troops killed Japanese attempting to surrender is widely documented. According to a survey conducted by the US Army in 1944, when asked ‘How did seeing Japanese prisoners make you feel about the Japanese?’ 58 per cent of veteran infantrymen in the Pacific responded that they wished to ‘wipe out the whole Japanese nation’. ³ US submariners, no less than land-based troops, frequently expressed contempt for the Japanese and a desire to kill them. To cite but one example, after the USS Seawolf sank the 389-ton naval auxiliary Banshu Maru leaving about 25 Japanese survivors in the water, motor machinist Bob McCoy recorded in his diary that: ‘Some of the fellows wanted to shoot them, just like they do our men, but the Old Man wouldn't let them …. If I got a chance to shoot one, stand clear for some fancy shooting.’ ⁴

Both before and during the war, racial prejudice was mobilized by the media in the United States of America, which frequently depicted the Japanese as sub-human. US propaganda films during the war such as Frank Capra's series Why We Fight drew a sharp distinction between the Allies and their evil antagonists. ⁵ Many in military circles viewed the cultivation of hatred as a means of overcoming soldiers' fears or reluctance to kill in combat. The racial prejudices of Americans were fuelled by notions of Japanese inferiority and fanaticism; it was widely believed that Japanese soldiers preferred death to surrender and that they would use any means possible to kill their would-be captors. Stories of Japanese atrocities, treachery and of using the pretext of surrender to turn on their enemies circulated widely among US troops and reinforced their hatred. ⁶

In this context of mutual hatred, the capture of Japanese prisoners by US submariners provides a unique vantage point since, contrary to most combat situations, the capture of prisoners at sea brought enemies face-to-face for extended periods of time. US submarine patrols in the Pacific typically lasted for about 60 days and, although there was a tendency to take prisoners toward the end of patrols, prisoners frequently remained on board for some weeks. Moreover, the confined spaces of a submarine meant that a degree of interaction between captors and prisoners was unavoidable. The following study, after providing background on the capture and treatment of POWs in the Pacific War, focuses on a series of cases in which Japanese were captured by US submariners. These cases have been selected largely on the basis of the available source material, especially where evidence beyond the official submarine patrol reports helps provide an additional perspective. In some cases, too, particular submarines were selected because their commanders' hatred of the Japanese is well documented and therefore their treatment of prisoners of special interest.

While the prisoners discussed here represent a small sample of those captured by submariners, they nevertheless suggest some significant features concerning their treatment. US naval personnel were instructed to follow the ‘letter and spirit’ of the 1929 Geneva Convention, which specified minimal use of handcuffs and leg irons, and forbade the use of coercion to obtain information. ⁷ It is clear that on some US submarines practices were adopted which contravened these guidelines, but it also appears that relations between prisoners and submariners were generally amicable. Despite the indoctrination of Japanese and Americans to hate one another, this study suggests that in many cases enmity quickly dissipated and that relations were frequently described as ‘friendly’. In other words, the reactions of submariners to real events could be quite different to their conditioning by cultural products. ⁸ Furthermore, the study suggests that relationships on board submarines were not always entirely one way, but at times could be mutually beneficial. Information obtained from prisoners about minefields and airfields, for example, could have an immediate impact on the survival of a submarine crew in enemy waters. In some instances the testimony of prisoners might even affect the careers of submariners in ways that their captors could not have foreseen.

The reluctance of Japanese military personnel to surrender is well documented; by some estimates only about 20,000 Japanese were captured by US forces in the Pacific before the surrender in August 1945. ⁹ Japanese military personnel were trained to believe that surrender meant not only shame for their nation and families, but invariably torture and execution by the enemy. The historian Niall Ferguson argues that expectations of treatment are a crucial determinant in the decision to surrender, and from this perspective the belief that they would be killed was the most important deterrent to Japanese surrendering. According to a report by the US Office of War Information in June 1945, 84 per cent of captured Japanese stated in interrogation that they expected to be killed by their captors. ¹⁰ Such beliefs were no doubt reinforced by a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude adopted by many Allied soldiers. In the Southwest Pacific, Allied soldiers sometimes had to be encouraged by promises of alcohol, extended leaves or other inducements to take prisoners. According to one GI, ‘We didn't take prisoners. The regimental headquarters finally said that if one were taken, the man who got him would receive a Bronze Star. That's how desperate they were for prisoners to interrogate’. ¹¹

Submariners were similarly reluctant to take prisoners because of the burden of looking after captives, lack of space and the potential risk POWs posed. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, explained that ‘U.S. submarines were limited in rescue measures by small passenger-carrying facilities combined with the known desperate character of the enemy. Therefore it was unsafe to pick up many survivors’. ¹² The reputation of the Japanese for fighting to the death or taking their own lives became to some degree a self-fulfilling prophesy. Oliver Kirk, commander of the USS Lapon, related that they did not pick up prisoners because they had heard they were suicidal. ¹³ Although occasionally submariners were instructed to take a prisoner if opportunity offered, the decision was for the most part left in the hands of individual submarine commanders.

By one estimate, over half of Japanese prisoners captured by US forces were naval personnel taken after their ships sank. ¹⁴ The relative success of naval forces, including US submarines, in obtaining prisoners might be attributed to a number of factors. Firstly, although training certainly discouraged capture, the Imperial Japanese Navy did not issue an equivalent to the Army's Field Service Code demanding death before surrender. Considerable numbers of the Japanese recovered at sea by submariners were also merchant seamen or fishermen rather than military men. While many Japanese preferred to face the near-certainty of drowning or freezing to death in the water to capture, there were others who took the opportunity to be rescued. Another reason for the relative success of naval forces in obtaining prisoners was that contrary to other nationalities, Japanese in isolation were more likely to surrender than those in company. According to a report from the Australian Department of External Affairs on Japanese prisoners in 1944, ‘On his own, and with none to report his movements, he will sometimes prefer to hold onto life and risk his future in captivity’. ¹⁵ Those Japanese captured by submarines were mainly survivors of sunken ships or downed aircraft and not uncommonly injured. As the war progressed, there was also a change in attitude among US submariners who demonstrated an increasing willingness to pick up survivors from sunken ships as attacks focused on smaller vessels and the risks involved in recovering survivors diminished. ¹⁶

For a number of reasons, it may be suggested that the mentality and emotional dynamics of both the captives and captors were in some ways different on submarines than in other circumstances. More than most combatants in land forces, technology ensured an emotional distance between submariners and their victims. ¹⁷ Ships were generally torpedoed from thousands of yards, and if the destruction of the ship was observed at all it would be by a small group with access to the submarine's periscope or bridge. In many cases the only evidence of destruction was heard through the sound gear, since submarines frequently dived deep after firing torpedoes in order to avoid enemy countermeasures. Whereas infantry forces generally deal in body counts, submariners viewed their victims as ‘targets’ rather than identifiable humans. Typically there was little thought given to those on the ships sunk unless they were spotted in the water as survivors or occasionally brought on board the submarine. Once on board, submariners were forced to concede that their victims were flesh and blood rather than an abstraction. Emotional control on submarines was important to survival and arguably their crews, who were screened for temperament as well as physical attributes, collectively represented a more tolerant group than most combat units in the military. Even so, submariners might first react to Japanese prisoners with spontaneous hatred and aggression. When an injured Japanese aviator was brought on board the USS Seahorse in September 1944, for instance, one of the torpedomen menaced the man with a machete. ¹⁸

Those pulled from the sea to a degree occupied an ambiguous status, in that they were not only prisoners but survivors. Particularly when those brought on board were not part of the Japanese military, they might be perceived more as victims than combatants. Once a degree of intimacy replaced anonymity in the confined spaces of a submarine, it was easier for submariners to deal with their prisoners as individuals. As Joanna Bourke suggests, in combat zones hatred could often be overtaken by feelings of empathy. ¹⁹ Historians have yet to deal with the question of how collective emotions are affected by circumscribed space, but it is likely that the claustrophobic dimensions of a submarine heighten these. ²⁰

It is almost certain that once captured the dominant emotion of prisoners was fear rather than hatred. They encountered the strangeness not only of another culture but the submarine environment itself. From the Japanese prisoner's perspective, more often than not they were the only captive on the submarine and were thus insulated from the peer pressure of other Japanese. Even when in small groups, Japanese who surrendered shared the emotions of fear and guilt.

From the point of view of those surrendering, the initial phases of contact with the enemy are generally the most dangerous, and this seems borne out in cases of prisoners taken by submariners. The element of intimidation was clearly evident when a prisoner was taken by the USS Tambor under Lieutenant Commander Russell Kefauver. After torpedoing a freighter, the 1248-ton Eika Maru in the Gulf of Tonkin on 29 May 1943, Tambor crewmen pursued Japanese survivors in the water. They captured one man, who only surrendered after the water around him was sprayed with machine gun bullets. Once on board, the prisoner was marched at gunpoint to the forward torpedo room and put on a stool where a .45-calibre pistol was aimed at the prisoner's head. Eventually the man slid to his knees and indicated his willingness to be shot. At this point his guard lowered the pistol and the Tambor's pharmacist's mate offered him a glass of whisky. The prisoner refused to drink until one of the Tambor crew first took a sip. ²¹

Following this shaky start, however, relations between the prisoner and the Tambor men quickly improved. Once submariners overcame their fear of prisoners committing sabotage on board, they frequently allowed captives more freedom of movement. In this case the prisoner, nicknamed Gus by the crew, soon became popular and was put to work doing chores around the submarine. At one stage, when the Tambor made an attack, the prisoner shouted ‘Banzai!’, but it was unclear whether this was in support of the Americans or their victims. By the time the Tambor reached its base at Fremantle, Australia, a month later on 27 June 1943, the prisoner had been provided with a pair of dungarees, a Brooklyn Dodgers sweatshirt and a sailor's cap. Before departing the submarine, the prisoner shook hands and bowed to each member of the crew. The crew were reportedly upset when Marines took the man in custody, blindfolding him and putting him in handcuffs. ²²

A similar pattern of initial intimidation of prisoners followed by a degree of acceptance appears common. After sinking the small freighter Meisei Maru in the Sea of Japan in the early hours of 11 June 1945, the crew of the USS Flying Fish under command of Robert D. Risser attempted to obtain a prisoner. Returning to the site of the wreckage several hours after the ship was sunk and aided by a language phrase book, Risser shouted from the bridge in Japanese ‘Don't be afraid, climb aboard’. ²³ From among about 14 survivors spotted in the water, Risser was able to coax only one man in uniform to board the submarine. According to Warren F. Wildes, an electrician's mate on the Flying Fish, the man appeared scared to death. ²⁴ The prisoner's initial introduction to the submarine, which included being stripped and having his hair and pubic area shaved, would not have allayed his fears. When offered a cup of soup, he initially refused it until one of the crewmen made a point of tasting it first. At least some of the crew made their contempt for the prisoner apparent soon after he boarded; one of the men mimicked committing hari-kari with a knife before offering the weapon to the prisoner. ²⁵

The crew's attitude toward him soon shifted, however. Four days later the submarine encountered a couple of tugs towing barges loaded with brick, and in a brutal close-range gun attack killed some of those on board the barges. It was unusual for submariners to witness the effects of their weapons at such close range, and on this occasion it seems the incident engendered sympathy if not guilt. A gunner on the submarine, Dale Russell, claimed that after the incident ‘we showed more compassion for our prisoner’. ²⁶ Although the prisoner could say ‘Thank you, sir’ in English, this was apparently the extent of his English vocabulary. It was noted that he did use Arabic numerals, which appeared helpful in communicating. The prisoner identified his former ship as a 2000-ton merchantman sailing from Sakata to Rashin, Korea, on which he was one of 11 troops aboard tasked with manning a 75-mm gun. Eventually the Flying Fish crew learned that the man, identified as Siso Okuno, was 34 years old, married with four children. ²⁷ Nicknamed ‘So-So’ by the crew, Warren Wildes later summed the prisoner up as a ‘Nice little guy’. ²⁸

To occupy his time, the prisoner was put to work polishing the torpedo tubes. This apparently caused him some distress since he considered that he was aiding the submarine to carry out attacks. ²⁹ In fact any labour on a submarine might be interpreted as a violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention's Article 31 which stipulated that ‘Labor furnished by prisoners of war shall have no direct relation with war operations’. ³⁰ Inasmuch as submarines were weapons, any contribution to their functioning might be viewed as a violation of the convention. The prisoner was kept under close watch, shackled to a torpedo rack when sleeping and leg ironed to a table when the submarine made an attack. Nevertheless, before the prisoner was disembarked at Midway on 30 June, he left a lengthy letter in which he expressed both his guilt in surviving his comrades and gratitude for his treatment by the Flying Fish crew. According to a published translation of the letter, Okuno asserted that ‘I died on the day which I was captured’, but he also referred to ‘the enormous capacity for friendship’ of the submarine's crew. ³¹ A similar blend of shame and gratitude was exhibited by other submarine prisoners.

Although more often than not only single prisoners were taken, at times submariners were prepared to allow more men on board. On 16 May 1944, southeast of Japan, the Pogy used its deck guns to sink a small diesel-powered sampan estimated to be 20 tons. The fishing boat, later identified as the Kaiko Maru, had a crew of ten and was travelling from Hachijo Jima to Yokohama with a full load of iced fish. Following the destruction of the vessel, six survivors were spotted in the water. One of the men was wounded and disappeared before the submarine reached him, but the other five crewmen were described by the patrol report as ‘quite pleased’ to board the Pogy. ³²

Once on deck, one of the prisoners greeted the submariners with the phrase ‘San Diego, California’. Although ‘San Diego’ appeared to be the extent of the man's English, he spoke some Spanish. A few of the Pogy’s crew spoke enough Spanish to foster a degree of communication, and the prisoner henceforth became known as ‘San Diego’. It transpired that many years ago this man had worked for several years with a Mexican fishing fleet off California. On board the Pogy, three of the captured men were kept in the forward torpedo room and the other two in the after torpedo room, where they were given bunks on empty torpedo skids. According to one of the submarine crew, William E. Battenfield, the prisoners initially refused to eat for fear of being poisoned. As related by Battenfield, he took a bite of the food being offered to them and smiled, indicating that it was safe to eat. Having once overcome their phobia of eating, according to Battenfield each prisoner had put on about 10 pounds by the time the submarine reached Pearl Harbor. ³³

While kept under armed supervision on the submarine, there was only one occasion when it appeared that the prisoners might cause difficulty. When the Pogy made another attack, the prisoners in the forward torpedo room, alarmed by the sound of gunfire, jumped from their bunks. They were, however, easily persuaded to return to their bunks after a torpedoman armed with a .45-calibre pistol yelled at them. The occasion of the gunfire was another attack on a small craft, this time directed at a trawler estimated to be about 40 tons. Although about a dozen survivors were subsequently spotted in the water, this time there was no attempt to pick them up. One of the survivors managed to crawl inside the bow buoyancy tank as the submarine passed through the wreckage, but according to the patrol report, ‘Not desiring to have him drown there, dislodged him with a blast of high pressure air’. ³⁴

The prisoners on the Pogy were put to work doing menial tasks such as carrying cases of food and apparently well treated. They were given clean navy dungarees to wear, and Battenfield supplied one of the men, who had lost his glasses, with a magnifying glass. Those assigned to oversee the prisoners inevitably attempted to teach them some English, although typically this was done partly for the submariners’ own amusement. Battenfield taught one of the prisoners to salute and say ‘Tojo barks at the moon’. ³⁵ Pogy engineman George Oliver Jones summed up relations between the crew and the prisoners as ‘very friendly’. According to Jones, ‘by the time we got them back to Pearl Harbor, three or four weeks later, you’d have thought they were members of the crew’. ³⁶ Before the prisoners disembarked at Pearl Harbor, a collection was taken up from among the crew to supply them with some clothing and money. The collection was apparently instigated by the Pogy’s skipper, Ralph M. Metcalf, who was also credited with warning the Marines who disembarked the prisoners at Pearl Harbor that they were not to be misused. As described by Jones: ‘We took turns telling the Prisoners good bye, you would never know that just a few days before that we had been trying to kill each other’. ³⁷

Subsequent interrogation of the prisoners by Japanese-language experts confirmed that Torakizu Kashiya had gone to San Diego in 1925, where he worked as a fisherman for three years. Once back in Japan, he ran a sake and vegetable store for a time, but returned to fishing before the Pacific war began. The other prisoners included Taro Kurokawa, the boat's engineer, who had been born in Chiba Prefecture in 1915. Although described by Interrogators as ‘decidedly security-conscious and evasive in his replies’, his information nevertheless checked out with that of his brother, Yasuta Kurokawa, who was also on the vessel. ³⁸ The other prisoners were Minokichi Ogoro, born in Chiba Prefecture in 1905, and Kiyoshi Yamamoto, born in Tokyo and 37 years old. In 2005 submarine veteran George Jones discovered a letter at the Submarine Museum in Groton, Connecticut, written in Japanese and signed by the prisoners, which he subsequently posted on the Internet. As translated by a Japanese-language specialist, the letter refers to the submarine crew as ‘all so kind and friendly soldiers,’ while also expressing the hope that the war would soon be over and they would be reunited with their families. ³⁹

Another situation in which more than one prisoner was taken emerged on the afternoon of 29 July 1944, when the USS Drum and the USS Balao battle surfaced to make a joint gun attack on two sampans estimated to be about 25 tons each. Neither of the sampans offered any resistance, and within 45 minutes both of the vessels attacked were well on fire. The Drum, under command of Maurice Herbert Rindskopf, approached survivors spotted in the water with the intention of picking up two prisoners. Of about 20 survivors, it happened that only two men were prepared to board the submarine and grabbed a line thrown over the side. One of the men was identified as Chono Natsumori, a crew member from the Nissyo Maru Number One sunk by the Drum. The other man was identified as a fisherman, Keiei Shimochi, from the sampan Nissyo Maru Number Seven sunk by the Balao. The latter prisoner suffered from numerous shrapnel wounds, some of which were considered quite serious. ⁴⁰

Keiei Shimochi was put in a bunk in the forward torpedo room where his wounds were tended by the Drum’s pharmacist's mate. According to 19-year-old petty officer second class John Meyer, ‘This was the first time that we ever saw what we had done’. ⁴¹ The other prisoner, Chono Natsumori, was bunked in the after torpedo room. Once the submarine crew overcame their fear of sabotage, Natsumori became a favourite with the crew. He was put to work in the galley washing dishes and peeling potatoes, and demonstrated a special liking for ice cream. The crew also taught him some English, although again this was partly for their own amusement since this included phrases like ‘Fuck Tojo’ and ‘Fuck the Marines’. ⁴²

According to a later interrogation report, Natsumori was born in 1906 and 39 years old when captured. He had worked as a grade school teacher at one stage, joining the Tokyo metropolitan police force in 1930. In 1933 he had been assigned to the Palau police force and after stints of duty on Saipan and at the Tokyo police training school, he returned to Palau in August 1942. In December 1943 he was transferred to Yap as Chief of Police, but then returned to Palau on 9 July 1944. Under the threat of aerial bombing, he was one of several hundred men who departed Palau on 27 July 1944 aboard tuna boats attempting to reach China via the Philippine Islands before being sunk by submarine two days later. Interrogators described Natsumori as ‘intelligent and very cooperative’. ⁴³ He was able to give information on Japanese personnel on Yap, as well as the organization of Japanese intelligence and thus appeared a useful asset for the Allies.

At times prisoners proved useful not only in carrying out menial tasks and sources of information, but as translators. On the morning of 8 July 1944, the USS Tautog torpedoed the 887-ton ship Matsu Maru and less than 15 minutes later a survivor was taken aboard who had already turned blue from the cold waters. Although the man had apparently been blown some distance from the ship and had several bad cuts, the patrol report described him as ‘a hardy specimen’. He later disclosed that his ship was carrying lumber from Tokyo to Muroran, a port city on Hokkaido, when attacked. Typically, the man was put to work once recovered, in this case as a mess attendant. ⁴⁴

Eleven days after the attack on the Matsu Maru, the Tautog battle surfaced to attack another small vessel with its deck guns. After being hit by fire from the Tautog’s 5-inch gun, the ship quickly caught fire and an explosion blew off its stern. When the submariners inspected the scene of the wreckage they found five survivors hanging on to a swamped lifeboat. All of the survivors were brought on board, two suffering wounds from shell fragments and another two described as ‘fairly old’. At this stage, the first prisoner picked up by the Tautog had learned enough English to serve as an interpreter. With his assistance the Tautog crew learned that the vessel sunk was the Hokuriu Maru carrying coconut oil from the Bonin Islands to Tokyo. It was decided to retain ‘the best specimen’ from among the survivors, and a short time after midnight the other four were put off the submarine in a rubber boat some two miles from the harbour at Tori Shima. ⁴⁵ This act of humanitarianism, however, later resulted in some criticism from the submarine hierarchy. In his endorsement of the patrol, squadron commander Charles Frederick Erck noted that recovering survivors and then releasing them near their native shores could give the enemy valuable intelligence about the armament and tactics of US submarines. ⁴⁶

The remaining two prisoners, both estimated to be about 19 years old, spent much of their time polishing and cleaning on the submarine, as well as doing mess duty. By the time the submarine reached Midway on 10 August, over a month after the first captive was brought on board, the prisoners had put on significant weight and, according to one submariner, had become ‘part of our crew’. ⁴⁷ Before being disembarked from the submarine, each prisoner was supplied with spare clothes and a bag of ‘goodies’.

One might suspect that prisoners received worse treatment on submarines under command of men known for their strong antipathy to the Japanese. Arguably the most famous of the United States' Second World War submarine skippers, and in one sense the most notorious, was Dudley Walker ‘Mush’ Morton, commander of the USS Wahoo. Soon after taking command of the Wahoo, Morton made his attitude toward the Japanese clear by posting placards in each submarine compartment that proclaimed ‘Shoot the Sunza of Bitches’. ⁴⁸ Morton achieved celebrity status both within the submarine service and the wider public following his first patrol in command of the Wahoo. After departing Brisbane, Australia, in January 1943, the Wahoo arrived at Pearl Harbor 24 days later having made one of the most successful American patrols of the war to that date. The Wahoo was credited with sinking five enemy ships, including an entire four-ship convoy. Morton received a Navy Cross for the patrol, as well as the Army's Distinguished Service Cross awarded by an impressed General Douglas MacArthur. Morton also gave numerous media interviews and appeared in The March of Time newsreel series. ⁴⁹

On the same patrol, however, Morton had ordered a gun action which has caused controversy ever since. After sinking the Japanese transport Buyo Maru off New Guinea, the Wahoo surfaced and used its deck guns to fire on survivors. According to one of the Wahoo crewmen, John Clary, when a Japanese survivor floated near the submarine, some of the men suggested taking him prisoner. Morton ordered instead that the man be shot. ⁵⁰ In later recalling the incident, the Wahoo’s yeoman, Forest Sterling, asserted: ‘You have to remember how badly we hated the Japs and how far behind we were in the war then’. ⁵¹

Even the crew of the Wahoo, however, appeared to temper their hate when brought face to face with the enemy. Only six months after the Buyo Maru incident, the Wahoo crew recovered six survivors after sinking a Japanese vessel with their deck guns. Once on board the survivors, one of which was described as only about 10 years old, were given a bath, clothes and a shot of Canadian Club whisky to warm them up. The Wahoo’s patrol report noted that the prisoners appeared grateful for being rescued. ⁵² The prisoners mainly stayed on mats in the after torpedo room, but they were also put to work cleaning in the submarine and quickly picked up some English. Forest Sterling asserted ‘it's hard to believe those stories about the butchery of soldiers after seeing these guys’. Indeed, Sterling professed that ‘We became so attached to our prisoners that we began to feel they were part of the crew’. ⁵³ As historian Joanna Bourke observes more generally, soldiers having face-to-face encounters with the enemy often found it difficult to believe the atrocity stories they had heard. ⁵⁴

At the time of the Buyo Maru incident, the Wahoo’s second-in-command was executive officer Richard O’Kane who throughout his life remained a staunch defender of Morton's actions. When O’Kane assumed his own command, the USS Tang, he exhibited a similar ruthlessness toward the enemy. According to the Tang’s executive officer, Murray Frazee, O’Kane was firmly committed to ‘sink more ships, kill more Japs’. Another fellow submariner described O’Kane as on a ‘mission of vengeance’. ⁵⁵ On 4 July 1944 the Tang crew took a prisoner after they torpedoed a ship in the Yellow Sea. Surfacing after the attack, the crew found two large overturned lifeboats but spotted only one survivor. This man attempted to evade the submariners by ducking under one of the overturned lifeboats, but he was eventually flushed out with the aid of grapnels and bursts of machine-gun fire. The man was then entangled in lines and pulled on board the submarine. ⁵⁶

Communication with the prisoner proved difficult, but it was ascertained from him that the ship sunk, estimated to be 7000 to 10,000 tons, carried a cargo of iron ore. The Tang’s patrol report conceded that this information would need to be confirmed by an interpreter, and later investigation confirmed the ship as the 6933-ton Yamaoka Maru. ⁵⁷ The prisoner was identified as Mishuitunni Ka, but on board the submarine he was nicknamed ‘Firecracker’ in commemoration of his capture on US Independence Day. The prisoner was kept under fairly close supervision; when the Tang made a subsequent attack approach, he was transferred from the torpedo room so that he would be unable to interfere with the firing process. At the same time, O’Kane formed the impression that the crew spoiled the prisoner, reporting that on one occasion he found the cook making special efforts to prepare Ka's rice the way he liked it. The crew quickly worked out ways to communicate with him and he was even brought along to film screenings on board. O’Kane concluded he became ‘much more of a crew's mascot than a prisoner of war’. ⁵⁸ When the Tang arrived at Midway on 14 July and four tall Marines arrived to escort the prisoner blindfolded and handcuffed from the submarine, some of the crew were visibly upset, O’Kane describing them as ‘like boys who had just lost a pet’. ⁵⁹ While it appears O’Kane saw the prisoner in less than fully human terms, one suspects his crew were more accepting.

The treatment of prisoners on the USS Barb is similarly instructive in light of the well documented contempt of skipper Eugene Fluckey for the Japanese. In a letter to his wife, Fluckey once told her ‘what a pleasure it is to eliminate Japs … These slant eyes aren't man nor beast… I could stick a pistol in a Jap's ear and pull the trigger without a qualm’. ⁶⁰ Fluckey did have his opportunity to at least threaten a Japanese prisoner with a gun, after he elected to take a prisoner following the sinking of the 1053-ton navy transport Koto Maru on 31 May 1944 in the Sea of Okhotsk. About two hours after witnessing the ship being struck by three torpedoes, the Barb returned to the scene of the wreckage to find a small number of survivors clinging to flotsam in the icy waters. As recorded in the Barb’s patrol report, the crew ‘Took most likely looking prospect aboard in a collapsed condition’. ⁶¹

Fluckey hoped to obtain information from the prisoner about the rest of the ship's convoy, as well as more general intelligence on the patrol area. Within a couple of hours of being brought on board, the prisoner was questioned. He initially refused to give his name, but became more forthcoming once Fluckey laid a .45-calibre pistol on the table. The prisoner identified himself as Kitojima Sanji, a second-class gunner's mate. ⁶² Communication with the prisoner posed obvious difficulties since he initially knew no English. In the main, Fluckey relied on a brief list of Japanese words taken from a Bureau of Personnel bulletin, along with sign language and drawings. The prisoner, for example, was able to draw the location of minefields on a map provided. As related by Fluckey in his patrol report, he conducted a ‘friendly interrogation’ over six days, at which point the prisoner:

began to realize the traitorous things he had said and made me promise that the information he had given would not get back to the Japanese or other prisoners, because after the war when he was returned to Japan they would lop his head off. ⁶³

In fact a couple of days later, according to Fluckey, the prisoner decided he would have to remain in the United States of America.

Whatever Fluckey's personal feelings toward the Japanese, on the Barb he ordered his men to treat the prisoner kindly. Under the supervision of Lieutenant Jay Alan Easton, ‘Kito’ as he was nicknamed, received some instruction in English and was assigned menial tasks on the submarine. The prisoner picked up English quickly and became well liked, no doubt in part because he was willing to point out the locations of minefields, air bases and gun emplacements that posed a threat to the submariners. When on 3 June consideration was given to carrying out a gun bombardment, the plan was aborted in large part because the prisoner indicated that there were seven major air bases in the vicinity which would endanger the submarine. ⁶⁴ In his patrol report, Fluckey wrote at some length concerning the intelligence value of the prisoner, stating that

it is my belief that more information can be obtained from a lone prisoner hauled out of a sure death in icy waters within a short time thereafter, while he is grateful to his rescuers for kind treatment, and a bit discouraged with his country, than if he were held incommunicado for weeks. ⁶⁵

Fluckey no doubt over simplified the complex motivations at play. His squadron commander, Charles Erck, was probably closer to the mark in pointing out in his endorsement of the patrol report that a ‘prisoner-of-war brought aboard a submarine on patrol are in an entirely different psychological status than those captured by other means’. He acknowledged that a submarine commander wasn't in a position to judge the veracity of a prisoner's statements, but thought ‘the P.O.W. probably will endeavour to save the submarine from destruction’. ⁶⁶ This was an important principle, because it challenged the stereotype of the Japanese as purely fanatics prepared to die if they could damage the enemy.

After the Barb reached Midway on 4 July 1944, the prisoner was handed over to the Marines, but not before the crew contributed cigarettes, clothes and comic books for his post-Barb life. Each crew member made a point of shaking his hand before he departed the submarine. The Barb’s executive officer, Robert McNitt, considered that the prisoner's information on minefields, air bases and gun emplacements might well have saved the submarine. ⁶⁷ Subsequent interrogation on shore established that his correct name was Yasujiro Kitamura. Born in 1909, at a young age he joined a fishing boat crew and was later inducted into the navy and served on the battleship Kongo. Although he was discharged after serving three years, he was recalled in May 1940 and assigned to the Amoy Naval Base Force in South China. He remained there until February 1943, when he returned to Yokosuka and was reassigned to the Koto Maru based at Ominato and which carried supplies to ports in the Kuriles. Although Kitamura later denied giving much of the information included in Fluckey's report, his interrogators determined that the information was ‘thoroughly checked and found to be extremely reliable’ in the main. The interpreters commended the men of the Barb ‘not only for their excellent job of interrogating with no previous knowledge of Japanese, but also for their treatment and care of the POW which put him in an ideal condition for a thorough interrogation’. ⁶⁸

While prisoners entered an unequal and coercive relationship from the moment of capture, at least occasionally on American submarines they could exercise some influence on the fate of their captors. As in the case of the Barb, a prisoner might be able to provide information that increased the likelihood of a submarine's survival. In even more extreme situations, they might even affect the careers and reputations of submarine commanders. In an attack which prompted a formal Japanese government protest, the USS Albacore under command of James Blanchard sank the 130-ton wooden steamer Taiei Maru on the morning of 3 July 1944. The small ship carried six crew and 77 evacuees between Yap and Palau. The passengers had originally been evacuated from Palau to Yap in the hope of reaching Japan, but following the American invasion of the Marianna Islands it was thought better to return to Palau. The Japanese protest alleged that as the Taiei Maru burned after an attack, the submarine's crew used machine guns to shoot at survivors in the water. On occasion, it was claimed, the submariners probed those floating in the water with long poles, and if they were found to be alive, they were killed by pistol shots.

These accusations were based on the report from the Taiei Maru’s captain, who claimed that the only survivors were himself, four crew and two women. In fact, though, there were five other survivors who had been picked up by the crew of the Albacore. In light of the accusations, the US government made an effort to obtain statements from the prisoners taken. In a communication dated 10 May 1945, it was reported that the prisoners originally taken by the Albacore were being held at Hay, New South Wales, about 500 miles inland from Sydney, and had been interviewed by a ‘special interrogator’ there. The prisoners were described as Eigoro Ota, a tailor aged 26; Tsukana Seki, a 17 year old student; Ichiro Kubota, who worked for the South Seas Civil Office and was 34 years old; Hideo Kitasono who worked for the Kokusai Wireless Company and was aged 30; and Yakichi Tamura, an employee of the South Seas Development Company aged 50. ⁶⁹

The most detailed statement was taken from Ota, who was being evacuated from Yap to Palau with his wife and daughter on the Taiei Maru when attacked by the Albacore. According to Ota, he witnessed a submarine surface and open fire on the vessel at about 10:00 in the morning. With a top speed of only seven or eight knots, the Taiei Maru's attempt to outrun the submarine was ineffectual. A shell soon hit the engine room and started a fire. The submarine then pulled alongside and raked the vessel with machine gun fire, killing Ota's wife and child and leaving him wounded. The passengers began to abandon ship, but although the submarine continued to fire at the burning vessel, Ota did not believe that the submariners fired at people in the water.

Ota and four others clung to a small wooden raft, assuming that most of the other passengers had drowned. The only other survivors they spotted were a girl about 19 years old and her younger sister who was aged five who were helped on to the raft. Later the ship's small lifeboat, leaking badly, came by with the Taiei Maru's captain and several wounded crew members. The lifeboat collected the two girls and headed back to the still burning vessel to see if they could salvage some empty oil drums to aid their buoyancy. The men on the raft were later taken on board the submarine. The essentials of this story were confirmed by the other POWs. Kubota recalled that

at the time of the machine gunning of the Taiei a great many persons were swimming around in the water, but he does not think the submarine shot at them, and that those who perished drowned rather than as a result of wounds.

Kitazono believed that many were killed from the shelling and machine gunning of the ship, but that survivors were not deliberately shot in the water.

The prisoners’ interrogator concluded that none of the POWs gave a very coherent account; at the time of the incident three were wounded, one was a boy and one ‘a rather unobservant old man’. It was noted that Kubota was

not too happy about the manner in which the sub machine gunned the Taiei, but he admitted that from a distance of about two hundred meters, the sub probably could not see that there were a great many women and children aboard.

At the time they were interviewed, all were in good health and ‘well satisfied’ with their treatment since capture. At least according to the interpreter, Ota described their treatment on board the submarine as ‘excellent’. ⁷⁰ It is clear that the Albacore’s crew had carried out a brutal gun attack on an unarmed vessel and one which proved to carry civilians rather than military personnel. On the other hand, the fact that the Albacore crew collected prisoners at all tended to counter charges of a deliberate massacre. Although the prisoners might have shaped their evidence to condemn the Albacore men, again it seems hatred was tempered by their treatment on the submarine.

Whereas the prisoners from the Taiei Maru helped exculpate the Albacore's crew of deliberately shooting survivors in the water, a prisoner from the Awa Maru proved crucial in establishing the culpability of the USS Queenfish in sinking a Japanese ship extended protection by the US government. The 11,600-ton Awa Maru had been granted safe passage in order to deliver Red Cross supplies for Allied prisoners of war and, although the supplies had already been delivered, the ship was sunk while still under safe conduct. In a postwar interview the Queenfish commander, Charles Elliot Loughlin, professed that unlike some other skippers he didn't have particularly strong feelings against the Japanese, but he nevertheless became embroiled in one of the most controversial submarine attacks of the war. ⁷¹ Despite several notifications of the Awa Maru's itinerary, the 35 year old Loughlin missed the relevant communications. Tracking the ship by radar in a dense fog, Loughlin believed the target to be a destroyer and fired four torpedoes in a tight spread shortly after 11 p.m. on 1 April 1945. All of the torpedoes hit the Awa Maru and the ship sank within minutes.

When the Queenfish crew reached the area of the sinking a short time later, they spotted 20 to 25 people amid the oil and debris in the water, but the survivors pushed away proffered life-lines and life-rings. According to Loughlin, as they prepared to depart the area they heard one person shout and after spotting a man threw him a life-ring. In the turbulent sea conditions pulling the man on board proved difficult; waves slammed him against the submarine's hull and when he was finally hoisted aboard he was described as ‘in a thoroughly dazed and shocked condition’. ⁷² It would be some hours before the prisoner could be questioned. Once he identified the ship as the Awa Maru, Loughlin later related, ‘we got a despatch off to ComSubPac [Commander Submarines Pacific] and then all hell broke loose’. ⁷³

The Queenfish executive officer, Jack Bennett, was assigned the task of interrogating the prisoner with the aid of a Japanese–English phrase book. It was quickly ascertained that the prisoner, Kataro Shimoda, could speak and write English ‘to a small degree’. The prisoner related that he had served some years as a ship's steward employed by Nippon Yusen Kaisha line. At the time of the Queenfish’s attack, he had been on the Awa Maru’s deck and was thrown overboard by the impact of torpedoes. Questioning further revealed that Shimoda was 46 years old and one of 28 stewards on the ship. Shimoda was married with five children and had spent 22 years at sea. According to Shimoda, the ship carried 1890 passengers, mainly the survivors of merchant ships previously sunk in the Pacific, who were en route to Japan to be reassigned. Indeed, Shimoda himself had already survived two ship wrecks before the Queenfish attack. The passengers also included 36 women and 14 children who had boarded at Saigon. ⁷⁴

For the most part Shimoda appeared well treated on board the Queenfish; he was given some freedom of movement on the submarine and employed doing laundry. As recollected by one of the crewmen, communications officer Howard ‘Shorty’ Evans, Shimoda was ‘a very nice person – the only one who had courage [enough] to come aboard the Queenfish’. ⁷⁵ After the Queenfish arrived at Guam, Shimoda was held at the island's Command Stockade in civilian internee clothing, where he was described as in excellent health. When interrogated he unequivocally identified the ship sunk as the Awa Maru and indicated that the ship was carrying rubber, tin, lead and rice when sunk. ⁷⁶ Even though the Awa Maru was carrying a dubious cargo on its return voyage to Japan, the ship's sinking created a diplomatic crisis. Admiral Charles Lockwood, commander of submarines Pacific, later described the sinking as ‘the biggest error in the history of American submarine operations’. ⁷⁷ On 2 April, only a day after the sinking, Admiral Ernest King as commander in chief of the US Fleet and chief of naval operations indicated Loughlin should be relieved as captain of the Queenfish and tried by general court martial ‘in order that the record may be clear’. ⁷⁸

Soon after arriving at Guam, Loughlin was tried by court martial charged with ‘culpable inefficiency in the performance of duty’, ‘disobeying the lawful order of his superior officer’ and ‘negligence in obeying orders’. ⁷⁹ Given the recovery of a survivor, Loughlin was unable to deny that the ship he sank was the Awa Maru and indeed without Shimoda it would have been near impossible to establish beyond doubt his guilt. Loughlin stated in a 1982 interview that ‘If we hadn't picked up the survivor I would have gone to my death bed insisting that we sank a destroyer’. ⁸⁰ Loughlin was convicted of negligence in obeying orders and, although he received the relatively light penalty of a letter of admonition from the Secretary of the Navy, was excluded from commanding another submarine during the war. ⁸¹

Once informed of the Awa Maru’s sinking, with more than characteristic concern the Japanese Foreign Office urgently requested the number and name of survivors, ‘their state of health and treatment’ and immediate measures for their repatriation. ⁸² In a communication via the Swiss government dated 20 June 1945, the US government acknowledged responsibility for the sinking of the Awa Maru and stated: ‘Disciplinary action is being taken with respect to the commander of the American submarine concerned’. It was also stated that the survivor ‘will be repatriated to Japan as soon as arrangements are perfected for further exchanges of nationals between Japan and the Allies’. ⁸³ Such arrangements would not be made until following the Japanese surrender and it was only in February 1946, after the US State Department recommended that Shimoda be returned to Japan on the first available transportation, that he returned to Japan. ⁸⁴

Following the war, many prisoners worried about their reception on return to Japan and kept their status as former POWs secret. Although there seems to have been little recrimination against those who disclosed that they were prisoners, discussion of former POWs' experiences remained a taboo topic in postwar Japanese society. ⁸⁵ Shimoda proved exceptional as a former submarine prisoner to gain some notoriety in Japan. In a television interview in 1965, commemorating the loss of the Awa Maru 20 years earlier, Shimoda gave a highly coloured account of his submarine experience in which he claimed he had his stomach pumped and was shackled to a large barrel, expecting to be thrown overboard. He also claimed that when interviewed by Charles Loughlin, the skipper had pulled a photo of the Awa Maru from his desk drawer, suggesting that he had deliberately sunk the ship despite its guarantee of safe passage. According to historian Roger Dingman, such claims were largely calculated to lessen Shimoda's sense of shame from being the Awa Maru's only survivor. ⁸⁶

As a number of the episodes described above underline, the submarine war was fought with a brutality which generally ignored the fate of survivors. These examples also underline the diversity of Japanese prisoners taken, which included civilians such as fishermen, civil servants and labourers as well as military men. Once brought on board a submarine, prisoners frequently underwent an initial period of intimidation or experienced coercion to obtain information. Contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, they were also likely to be put to work in a manner that at least indirectly supported submarine operations. For the most part, however, prisoners were likely to be treated well. Officially, submarine crews were warned against fraternization with enemy prisoners. As Charles Lockwood put it, ‘our fanatical enemies would undoubtedly take advantage of any relaxed vigilance to damage the ship or personnel even at the cost of their own lives’. ⁸⁷ In some instances, prisoners were kept carefully segregated and under constant guard, but this seems to have been more the exception than the rule. In most cases, the prohibition against fraternization was generally ignored by submarine crews; no doubt partly for their own amusement, submariners were generally keen to interact with prisoners on board.

The prospect of gaining intelligence provided the main rationale for submariners taking prisoners. One reason for the reasonable treatment of prisoners on submarines was the assumption that this was more likely to elicit intelligence and cooperation than abuse. The cases discussed here support the claims of contemporaries that once Japanese prisoners realized that they would not be tortured and killed they often provided information freely. Japanese prisoners frequently believed their surrender equated to a form of high treason against their own government, and therefore had little reason not to divulge information. ⁸⁸ There were even cases in which Japanese volunteered to join the US forces. ⁸⁹ Given the initial expectation of being killed and tortured, humane treatment, combined with a belief that they no longer existed in the eyes of their own nation, could induce some prisoners to identify with their captors. ⁹⁰ Despite the language barriers, it appears that few submarine commanders were prepared to postpone questioning prisoners until they could be handed over to trained interpreters. As far as the evidence allows, it seems that submarine commanders made judgments about any intelligence obtained on empirical grounds rather than generalizations based on Japanese stereotypes. ⁹¹ At least in some cases, such as that of the USS Barb, information obtained from prisoners proved of immediate use. To the extent that captives contributed to the continued survival of a submarine, they entered into a symbiotic relationship with its crew. More surprisingly, in some cases such as that of the Albacore and the Queenfish, prisoners might even indirectly influence the careers of their captors.

Despite the indoctrination of hatred toward the enemy which took place on both sides, it seems that this often broke down quickly in face-to-face personal encounters. Familiarity often restored prisoners’ humanity once captives were recognized as having individual histories and personalities. The veteran submariner Edward Beach claimed that most prisoners ‘gained weight during their sojourn on board, and were so well treated that instructions had finally to be issued to treat them with greater severity in order not to “spoil” them’. ⁹² While submariners were perhaps prone to overstating their largesse, there is consistent evidence that prisoners were often accepted as fellow humans and frequently treated with some empathy. It was not uncommon for submarine crews to contribute clothes, cigarettes and candy to prisoners and express genuine distress when they were removed at port for incarceration. There is at least some evidence that the prisoner-captor experience could be transformative on both sides. Julian T. Burke Jr, executive officer of the USS Flying Fish, credited a prisoner with having changed his thinking about the Japanese, while the same prisoner, in a letter translated once they reached Pearl Harbor, praised the crew's humane treatment and professed his future dedication to the cause of peace. ⁹³ These examples challenge the common notion that the Allies held only a burning contempt for the enemy in a ‘kill or be killed’ conflict.

This is not to suggest that Japanese prisoners were in any way treated as equals. Occasional references to prisoners as ‘pets’ or ‘mascots’ by some submariners indicates that their status could still be seen as subhuman or animalistic. Recent neuroscience research indicates that empathy is always strongest among one's own ethnic group. ⁹⁴ The cases presented here illustrate not only the limits of hate, but the limits of empathy. On the other hand, many submariners described relationships with prisoners as ‘friendly’, suggesting that they experienced some emotional connection beyond mere tolerance. While one should be sceptical about how far any genuine friendships were formed, it is clear that manifestations of hatred sometimes evident immediately after capture quickly dissipated in most cases. In any case, it is unlikely that the presence of prisoners provoked only one emotion as opposed to more complex reactions. ⁹⁵ The case studies described here serve to underline the diversity of Japanese prisoner of war experiences and challenge essentialist perspectives on the dominance of hate and racism in the Pacific War.