A question about Pearl Harbor?

Question

The first sign of the attack was a Japanese submarine that was sneaking into the harbor. My question is, what happened to that sub? In the movie "Tora Tora Tora" the Navy dropped depth charges, but did the sub sink or did it get away?

Answer 1

I'll paraphrase what Morison says in vol. III, pp. 96-97, 115
of his 15-volume History of U.S. Naval Operations in WWII:

... [the attack...] was launched shortly after midnight 6-7 December by casting off the five midgets [submarines] from their mother ships.

At 0342, four full hours before the air attack, Ens. R.C. McCloy, USNR, made the first enemy contact of the war by sighting the periscope of a midget submarine, and passed the word to destroyer USS Ward. After Ward had been searching for over two hours, a Navy Catalina sighted the same or another midget at 0633, dropped smoke pots, and Ward attacked at 0645, sinking it with gunfire and depth charges.

Ward reported the submarine encounter at 0654, but it was not decoded until 0712, whereupon destroyer USS Monaghan was dispatched to assist Ward.

Meanwhile, the antisubmarine gate at the harbor entrance had been opened at 0458 to allow minesweepers in, but was inexplicably not closed until 0840. Consequently, at least one midget entered the harbor, and was rammed and depth-charged by Monaghan at 0843 during the air attack.

Another midget ran on a reef near the entrance channel, was spotted and fired upon at 0817, submerged and escaped, but because of damage, was later beached on Oahu where the skipper surrendered.

The fate of the other two midgets is unknown, at least when Morison wrote (1948), but it is certain that all five of the Special Naval Attack Unit were lost.

Evaluating this episode, Prange writes (1981): "The Navy's most serious error in this preattack submarine chapter of the Pearl Harbor story was its failure to advised the Army that a destroyer had sunk an obviously hostile submarine in the Defensive Sea Area. The incident might have provided just the added weight needed to move the Hawaiian Department from the No. 1 alert to No. 2 or 3 because a submarine snooping near Pearl Harbor could scarcely have been charged up to local saboteurs." (At Dawn We Slept, pp. 497-98)

Answer 2

good question - I dont know what happened to the
"reported sub" if it even existed!
Most of the information on Pearl Harbour is a joke.
All up and down the Pacific coast in British Columbia,
Alaska, California, Washington, Oregon, etc. there were
dozens of volunteer radio operators listening to Japanese
communications. They triangualated the ships leaving japan
WEEKS before pearl harbour, and frantically notified the US
military and politicians.
On the night of the " surprise " attack, after weeks of notification of the impending japanese fleet, the Top General at the US was having a grand party, and was interrupted by an urgent telegram from an operator in Canada - the General was seen throwing the telegram on the floor and stamping his feet in disgust...
Basically the US had spent Billions of dollars making the bomb and with the surrender of germany, had no ENEMY to drop it on ! The US had pulled thousands of dirty stunts all through the war - nothing was sacred in the huge project to make the ULTMATE weapon.... In Canada, workers were busy making brass and copper shells for explosives for the Canadian troops. They were shipped to England, and unloaded to be sent to the front. On the docks, the Americans were taking the copper and brass ammunitions, and LOADING them on the US ships to take back to the US to be melted down to make COPPER wire needed in the nuclear refineries - the troops in Europe were told that the German subs had sunk the ships with the supplies.... darn...
which, ironically, was partly the truth, since Turing, in England was decoding the German communications, and would know that the Germans had de-coded the allied codes, and would notify the Prime Minister..... who would tell the US, who would change all the codes - but not tell the Canadians for a month or so- so that the subs would all follow and sink the Canadian ships, which acted as decoys to allow the US ships to transport the brass and copper back to the US without problems....

The US moved every single large ship out of Pearl harbour in exactly the opposite direction ( what a co-incidence ) of the approaching Japanese fleet, weeks before, on "training manouvers " and even the Hollywood movies show that all the alarms and lookouts and warnings were turned off. A couple of ships, and the soldiers onboard were deliberately sacrificed as a "show" staged by the americans, to gain popular public support ...

The ploy worked, and the hated Japanese were soon bombed. Even this was a screw up - as the original target was covered in cloud, and a secondary, non-military target had to be used.
Quickly seeing the horror of a single explosion, the emperor immediately surrendered - but, oh my gosh, somehow, the surrender was never received....
And then the second bomb was dropped. This bomb was a different type, and the US military wanted a LIVE, real, population to test it on - at any cost. Again, the real military target was covered with clouds, and it was extremely important that good film footage be made of the blast for analysis by the military, so a secondary target was used - with more civilians.
The entire " Japanese " war was contrived and manipulated by the US.
Since the US lied about the entire " surprise attack" and everything else, the story of the submarine being the first indication of the japanese is obviously stretched - the US knew weeks ahead of time, and carefully planned everything.
The poor, sucker, soldiers left in the harbour, may have been first alerted by the sub, but the entire US military command, and the entire US government knew everything....
Bits and pieces of this " behind the scenes " truth were gleaned almost by accident - the British laws allowed researchers to see classified documents and were not too concerned about lies and schemes by the US, and cared even less about the " colony" ( Canada, ) so that by matching events thru releases of information by the US ( who did not care about hiding Canadian and British info ) and the Canadian releases ( who did not care about covering up the US stuff or the British stuff ), it became clear that the entire Pearl Harbour thing, and the dirty tactics used to promote the BOMB, have been covered up continually - even to today, to maintain the illusion. The latest Pearl harbour movie, in view of the truth, is really funny. If you want to know how desperate and scheming the US military was and is on the suject of the bomb, just look into what happened to Oppenhiemer - the guy who led the entire project - what a way to treat a human being !

Answer 3

It was fired on by a US warship and sunk. It was actually the first shot fired in the attack. I believe the History Chanel has a story about that sub. They actually found it and took some pictures. You can see the blast hole in the side of the coning tower...real cool stuff.

Answer 4

It was fired on by the USS Ward and sunk. It was recently found by a History Channel funded expedition, on the sea floor with a shell hole in its conning tower.

Answer 5

the japanese sent 3 small subs they all sunk one of them is still in pearl harbor i saw on discovery

Answer 6

yes, it was a midget sub, i think 3 man crew. it was sunk. awhile back the discovery channel searched and found it, out away from the harbor.
another one washed up on a beach, and one guy was captured. there is a photo of him, grinning.
i believe still another one sunk itself without getting close.

Answer 7

It was lost an believed to be sunk but hasn't been found.

Answer 8

It was sunk and only recently found.

Answer 9

It's been sunk, most likely.

Answer 10

it was sunk,, think I saw a documentary on PBS on it