Японская подводная лодка I-8: История и военные преступления

Imperial Japanese Navy Junsen III type submarine

I 8 was an Imperial Japanese Navy Junsen III (or J3) type submarine commissioned in 1938 that served during World War II. Designed as submarine aircraft carriers, I 8 and her sister ship Japanese submarine I 7 were the largest Japanese submarines to be completed before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific in 1941. With embarked floatplanes, I 8 participated in operations related to the attack on Pearl Harbor, patrolled off the United States West Coast, and took part in the Guadalcanal campaign and the Okinawa campaign. In 1943, I 8 completed a technology exchange mission with a voyage to German occupied France and back to Japan, the only submarine to complete a round trip voyage between Japan and Europe during World War II. Under a new commanding officer in 1944, her crew committed war crimes during anti shipping operations in the Indian Ocean. She was sunk in 1945.

I 8 departed Kure on 21 February 1944 and proceeded to Penang, which had departed Melbourne, Australia, on 7 March 1944 bound for Colombo, Ceylon, with a cargo of 6,640 tons of bagged flour and with 101 men and one woman — 27 passengers, 10 gunners, and a crew of 65 — aboard according to one source, although sources also claim 97, and jamming her rudder hard to port, forcing her to steam in circles. Her crew launched three lifeboats, and the gunner manning one of her Oerlikon 20 millimeter automatic cannon opened fire on the twin periscopes of I 8, which was surfacing off Tjisalak′s port quarter, marking I 8′s position for Tjisalak′s gun, then ceased fire and jumped overboard. When I 8 again began to surface, the gun fired four more rounds at her and forced her to submerge again before Tjisalak, still underway and circling to port, turned so far that the gun no longer would bear on I 8. Three crewmen died in the sinking, but the survivors gathered in the three lifeboats, two of which were damaged and leaking. I 8 surfaced again within of two of the boats. After they did, Tjisalak′s captain identified himself, and he, three other of the sunken ship′s officers, and three of her passengers — including the lone woman aboard, an American Red Cross nurse — were taken below. in at least some cases, one of the men was forced to watch the shooting of the other man brought aft with him before he, too, was shot. Those who jumped overboard were shot in the water, I 8′s crew then beheaded Tsijalak′s Indian sailors one by one while a cameraman filmed the killings. Brought onto I 8′s bridge during the massacre, Tsijalak′s captain underwent a harsh interrogation there and then was killed with a sword. The other six people taken below decks before the massacre also did not survive, and postwar testimony revealed that the American nurse was taken on deck and shot to death on the evening of 26 March. or six

On 30 March 1944, I 8′s Watanabe E9W1 (Allied reporting name "Slim") floatplane sighted the British 6,589 gross register ton armed merchant ship in the Indian Ocean southeast of Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago during a reconnaissance flight. Two torpedoes struck Nellore, which caught fire and went dead in the water, Jean Nicolet had departed San Pedro, California, on 12 May 1944 bound for Calcutta, India via Fremantle, Australia, and Colombo, Ceylon, Advised on 27 June 1944 to alter course to the west to avoid the area where I 8 had sunk Nellore to the north that day, The "smoke' in fact was I 8′s diesel exhaust as she raced to get ahead of Jean Nicolet and achieve a position for an attack. and all on board abandoned ship in her four lifeboats and two life rafts. I 8 surfaced and opened gunfire on Jean Nicolet. I 8 then began searching for Jean Nicolet′s survivors with a searchlight while a member of her crew called out for Jean Nicolet′s captain to identify himself. confiscated the survivors′ lifejackets, shoes, and anything of value they had, then bound them and forced them to sit on I 8′s deck. I 8′s crew then approached a raft with 10 men aboard and ordered its occupants to come aboard, firing automatic weapons at five men who slipped away in the darkness but bringing the other five onto I 8′s deck. Her crew then forced Jean Nicolet′s survivors to watch while the Japanese again opened gunfire on their ship, making no effort to save two bound survivors who were swept overboard by I 8′s bow wave and drowned. After he did, he and Jean Nicolet′s radio officer and a third man were led aft of I 8′s conning tower, and the other survivors never saw them again. One by one over the next several hours, the rest of the survivors then also were led aft of the conning tower, forced to run a gauntlet of clubs, pipes, bayonets, knives, and swords,

With 30 bound survivors still on deck and awaiting their turn to run the gauntlet, and abruptly crash dived, plunging them into the ocean to drown as the submarine submerged beneath them. and some of them began to swim toward the burning Jean Nicolet, which was about away, but before they could reach her, the ship sank on 3 July 1944 about 2 1/2 hours after sunrise at At around 12:00 on 4 July 1944, a Catalina flying boat sighted the men in the water, and the Royal Navy armed trawler rescued the remaining survivors on the afternoon of 4 July, about 30 or 34 hours (according to different sources) after I 8 submerged. Sources disagree on the number of deaths and survivors. One source identifies the three men I 8′s crew took aft before the massacre began as Jean Nicolet′s captain, chief officer, and radio officer, Sources differ on the number of survivors, but one asserts that Hoxa rescued 23 men and that 77 died in the sinking and massacre, implying that all men taken below before the massacre also were murdered, but one source claims that only four men survived. Few of I 8′s crew during his time in command survived the war, but Allied investigators located three of them after the war and prosecuted them. One, found in the United States, was granted immunity in return for testifying against his former comrades and was then allowed to return to the United States. The others were convicted and served prison terms, which the Japanese government commuted in 1955.

Despite her new kaiten fittings, I 8 had no kaiten on board when she departed Saeki with the submarines Japanese submarine Ro 41, Japanese submarine Ro 49, and Japanese submarine Ro 56 on 18 March 1945 to operate south of Okinawa. She returned to Saeki on 19 March for repairs, but again got underway on 20 March 1945 to begin her patrol. The preliminaries of the Okinawa campaign began on 26 March 1945, when American forces began landing on the Kerama Islands. At 18:05 on 28 March 1945, she transmitted a message reporting that she had sighted two Allied transports and four destroyers from Naha, bearing 150 degrees. The Japanese never heard from her again.

On 31 March 1945, the U. S. Navy destroyer Stockton detected a surface target on radar while screening a task group off the Kerama Islands. She approached the contact, which turned out to be I 8. I 8 crash dived, after which Stockton made sonar contact on her. Over the next four hours, Stockton expended all of her depth charges in seven attacks against I 8. I 8 surfaced just as the destroyer Morrison arrived on the scene to reinforce Stockton. I 8 immediately submerged again, but Morrison dropped a pattern of depth charges that forced I 8 to surface from Morrison. After a 30 minute exchange of gunfire, I 8 capsized and sank by the stern in the Philippine Sea at One of Morrison′s boats picked up an unconscious petty officer who had been a member of I 8′s gun crew, and he was I 8′s only survivor. On 10 April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy declared I 8 to be presumed lost in the Okinawa area. The Japanese struck her from the navy list on 10 August 1945.