First Shot: The Untold Story of the Japanese Minisubs that Attacked Pearl Harbor
by John Craddock
McGraw-Hill, 2006, 255 pages
The title, First Shot: The Untold Story of the Japanese Minisubs that
Attacked Pearl Harbor, deceives readers as to the true contents of this
rambling Pacific War history. Only three chapters cover the title's topic,
whereas the other six chapters stray into all sorts of other subjects. Despite
the subtitle's marketing of the "untold story" about minisubs that attacked
Pearl Harbor, almost all of this story about Japanese midget subs (term used in book despite
subtitle) has already been told in detail in two fine books:
Advance Force
Pearl Harbor (1992) by Burl Burlingame and
The Coffin Boats: Japanese
Midget Submarine Operations in the Second World War (1986) by Peggy Warner
and Sadao Seno. First Shot uses various key sources to retell not only
the Japanese midget sub story but also other Pacific War stories covered
thoroughly in other books. The book's Prologue and Epilogue do provide an update
to Burlingame's 1992 book regarding the exciting finding in 2002 of the fourth of
the five
Japanese midget subs that tried to attack Pearl Harbor.
Chapter 1 typifies the book's lack of focus. The chapter seems to signal the
start of a biography of Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese Combined Fleet Commander,
while the midget subs' planned role in the Pearl Harbor attack gets discussed
for only two pages. Although the midget subs were considered to be part of a
special attack force, a euphemism for a suicide squad, Admiral Yamamoto demanded
that a plan be developed to recover the two-man midget sub crews after the
attack. Five I-class mother submarines carried on top one midget sub each to be
released near the Pearl Harbor entrance. After the midget subs fired their two
torpedoes, they were to proceed to a small remote Hawaiian island to rendezvous
with the mother subs. Despite this scheme for a possible rescue after the attack,
the crewmen still recognized that their mission, for all intents and purposes,
was a suicide attack due to the extremely slim chance of recovery.
Admiral Yamamoto returns later in the book as Chapter 6, "The Assassination,"
focuses on how American military intelligence decoded a message that he would be
flying from Rabaul to Bougainville on April 18, 1943. A squadron of American
P-38 Lightning fighters intercepted Yamamoto's plane and shot it down over the
jungle.
Several other chapters deal with topics far removed from the midget subs that
attacked Pearl Harbor. Chapter 2 gives a rather boring summary history of midget
subs developed and deployed by other countries, with the chapter's last few
pages briefly describing Japanese midget subs. Chapter 5 presents the Battle of
Midway with vague mentions of a "cameo role" by midget subs (p. 99) and that the
Japanese force "included at least six subs" (p. 114), but the author provides no
further details about these midget subs at Midway. Chapter 7, "The Suicide
Squads," discusses the Japanese military's decision to use suicide aircraft and
kaiten (human torpedoes). The chapter focuses on the I-58 submarine captained by
Mochitsura Hashimoto with an extended diversion into how his submarine torpedoed
and sank the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945. Chapter 8
considers Japanese wartime atrocities and the postwar international tribunal to
prosecute Japanese war criminals. The author uses a couple of pages to speculate
on what would have been the fate of Admiral Yamamoto had he survived the war.
The majority of only three chapters deal with the first shot of the Pacific
War and the five midget subs that attacked Pearl Harbor, but even these chapters
at times wander off to other subjects. Chapter 3 tells the story of the first
shots of the Pacific War fired by the old destroyer USS Ward at one of
the Japanese midget subs trying to sneak into the harbor. The shots and
subsequent depth charges destroyed the enemy midget sub, but the radio message
from Ward sent more than one hour before the Japanese air attack inexplicably
did not alert anyone that an attack may be imminent. Ten pages at the end of
this chapter digress from the main storyline to consider the reasons why the
Pearl Harbor attack came as a surprise with the main source being a book
published in 1985 by Edwin T. Layton, the Navy's Chief Intelligence Officer at
Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack.
Chapter 4 presents the Pacific War's first prisoner of war, Kazuo Sakamaki,
who was captured when his midget sub ran aground on the day after the Pearl
Harbor attack. This chapter also summarizes what is known about what happened to
the five midget subs launched between 7 and 12 miles from the harbor entrance.
None succeeded in their attacks. Chapter 9 examines the retrieval of three
midget subs and the puzzle of what happened to the two midgets that have never
been recovered, the ones from the I-16 and I-20 mother submarines. One of these,
as described in the book's Epilogue, was discovered in 2002 and still lies unrecovered
in water over 800 feet deep. Kazuo
Sakamaki piloted the I-24 midget that was captured the day after the attack. The
I-22 midget entered the harbor, fired two torpedoes that missed, and was sunk
after the destroyer Monaghan fired at and rammed it and then dropped
depth charges. This heavily damaged midget was raised a few weeks later and
placed for viewing at Pearl Harbor. The I-18 midget sub, still with two unfired
torpedoes, was discovered in 1960 in 76 feet of water in Keehi Lagoon just
outside the Pearl Harbor entrance. The recovered sub had heavy damage consistent
with depth charges. Japan claimed the I-18 midget sub as its property, and the
refurbished sub now is on display outside the Museum of Naval History in
Etajima, where the former Japanese Naval Academy was located.
The chapter on suicide squads contains a few errors. Craddock writes (p.
157), "more than 3,000 kamikaze aircraft were readied on Okinawa" in preparation
for the Allied invasion, but actually Japan had only a few aircraft at airfields
on Okinawa. The majority of kamikaze aircraft were at bases on mainland Japan
with many being readied at airfields on Kyūshū, the southernmost main island of
Japan, for mass kamikaze attacks against the Allied fleet. There are some
spelling errors of Japanese names, such as Hiroshi Kuroke (p. 157) rather than
Kuroki for one of the co-inventors of the kaiten human torpedo. The destroyer
Mannert L. Abele, sunk by two kamikaze aircraft including an ōka rocket-powered glider bomb on April 12,
1945, is incorrectly referred to as Mannert L. Aebele (p. 157). The I-58
submarine carrying kaiten weapons was part of the Kongō Group, not Konga Group
as stated in the book (pp. 153, 155).
Although First Shot does have some interesting sections, Burlingame's
Advance Force
Pearl Harbor (1992) contains much more information and numerous photos
related to the Japanese midget subs that attacked Pearl Harbor. For those
interested in other subjects covered by First Shot, the principal sources
used by Craddock will most likely provide better and more focused information.
For example, those interested in Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto should consider
Hiroyuki Agawa's exceptional biography, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and
the Imperial Navy (1979).
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