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By Root 935 0

freighters were carrying 1,800 British and 718 Australian POWs in a convoy from Singapore when one was sunk by the submarine Sealion on 12 September 1944. On the sinking vessel and in the water afterwards, some prisoners seized the opportunity to kill such Japanese as they could lay hands on. Their behaviour was shown to be prescient when Japanese escorts returned to pick up their own survivors, abandoning the prisoners to drown. “Gentlemen, I am sorry,” a Japanese officer told his desperate neighbours in the water before he himself accepted rescue. “This is the way of my people. May you be spared.” Next night, Pampanito sank a tanker and the second freighter. Six hundred more prisoners were left in the sea, dying in scores by the hour. An Australian was deeply moved to hear a cluster of British feebly singing “Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!” as they waited their turn to perish.

Three nights later, Pampanito returned to the area, and glimpsed a cluster of men on a raft. Assuming they were Japanese, the boat closed in to collect a sample captive for intelligence purposes. Confronted instead by Allied prisoners in the most desperate state, the Americans picked up seventy-three, radioed Sealion to join the rescue, and headed for Saipan: “It was heartbreaking to leave so many dying men behind,” said the skipper. Thirty-two more POWs were recovered by the second submarine, of whom seven died on the passage to Saipan. The oddest feature of these rescue operations was that the U.S. submarines made no attempt to provide food or water for the men whom they were obliged to leave in the sea. Perhaps it was thought that quick deaths were more merciful. Of 1,518 prisoners who left Singapore, just 159 survived. It is hard to regard the POWs’ fate as anything save a tragedy of war, compounded by the customary inhumanity of the Japanese.

GOING HOME at the end of a patrol, most submarine captains allowed their tired, pallid crews to sunbathe on deck. At Pearl, the much-beloved Admiral Lockwood, “Prince Charley,” personally greeted each of the boats under his command when it returned from patrol, while a band on the dockside played “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Crews clambered a little unsteadily ashore. After something between five and ten Pacific war patrols, most of those who survived were transferred to less demanding Atlantic postings, or to shore jobs. Those who landed at Pearl and were destined to sail again retired to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikiki Beach for R and R. After a week or two ashore, replenishment and maintenance, they went back to do it all again.

“By the fall of 1944538,” wrote Cmdr. Pete Galantin, “the mood in headquarters at Pearl was almost euphoric.” In November, patrol skippers found the supply of targets shrinking, but submarines continued to wreak devastation upon such ships as they met. On the sixth, a four-boat wolfpack attacked the heavy cruiser Kumano, escorting a convoy to Japan. Guitarro fired nine torpedoes and scored three hits. Two further torpedoes from Bream exploded against the cruiser’s hull, as did three more from other submarines. The big ship was able to beach herself on Luzon, where she was finished off by carrier aircraft three weeks later. On 15 November, a wolfpack led by Cmdr. Charles Loughlin of Queenfish attacked a convoy transporting the Japanese 23rd Division from Manchuria to Luzon. One ship, carrying two battalions and the divisional artillery, was immediately sunk. Two days later, Loughlin’s group again caught the same convoy in the Yellow Sea, sinking a second transport and damaging a tanker. Shortly afterwards, Spadefish hit an escort carrier, the 21,000-ton Jinyo, and watched her planes slide into the sea as she listed and foundered.

On 21 November, Sealion sank the battleship Kongo with a single torpedo hit. Archerfish was on lifeguard duty a hundred miles south of Tokyo Bay, when she was released for attack operations because no air force sorties were scheduled. The submarine promptly sighted and sank the aircraft carrier Shinano, a 59,000-ton converted battleship