Redwood History Basic Data

A. JAPANESE SUBMARINES CRUISE the PACIFIC COAST

1. First Attacks

Japanese submarines operated off the western coast of the United States on several occasions during World War II. When plans were made for the attack on Pearl Harbor, a directive was issued on November 5, 1941, by the Japanese Navy for its 6th Fleet of submarines to "make reconnaissance of American Fleet in Hawaii and West Coast area, and, by surprise attacks on shipping, destroy lines of communication." [1] After participating in the operations directed against Pearl Harbor, the 6th Fleet dispatched nine submarines to attack shipping along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. Seven of these vessels were equipped to carry planes for reconnaissance. These submarines began arriving off the coast about December 17 and operated on previously assigned stations from Cape Flattery in the north to San Diego in the south. [2]

The submarines remained off our coast for about ten days. Only four of the nine attacked any shipping. The tanker Agwi-world was shelled by a submarine off Santa Cruz, California, on December 19, but she escaped. Four other vessels, S. S. Emidio, Samoa, Larry Doheny, and Montebello were attacked off the California coast before Christmas. Two of these vessels, both tankers, were destroyed. [3]

Claims were voiced at the time that an army B-24 bomber sent a Japanese submarine to the bottom on Christmas Eve, at a point 50 miles off the mouth of the Columbia River. This was an error on the airmen's part, because the submarine assigned to that station, I-25, was destined to return to the Pacific coast in the late summer of 1942. The submarine flotilla had planned to engage in simultaneous shelling of coastal cities on Christmas Eve, but at the last moment, Japanese fleet headquarters ordered the submarines to abandon the plan and to return to their base at Kwajalein. [4]

2. Sinking of S. S. Emidio

One of the vessels attacked by the submarines was the General Petroleum Tanker Emidio. On Saturday, December 20, she was running down the coast, when at 1 p.m. the lookout sighted a large submarine bearing down. Capt. A. C. Farrow, in an effort to escape conned a zigzag course, which took the 6,912-ton tanker nearer the coast. The submarine, however, was too swift, and she soon drew in range. Her gunners then opened fire with their 5-1/2-inch gun. Six shells were fired, five of them bursting on the target. Several of the lifeboats were damaged, the tanker's radio put out of action, and three sailors knocked over board. The radioman, however, was able to get off an S. O. S. before his set went dead.

Captain Farrow and most of the crew then abandoned Emidio. While they were searching, unsuccessfully, for the men carried overboard, a patrol bomber of the U. S. Navy appeared and the submarine submerged. Emidio, with only a skeleton crew aboard, was wallowing and helpless, while Farrow and his people in the two lifeboats looked for the men hurled overboard by the exploding shells. As soon as the bomber disappeared, the submarine surfaced, closed to within 440 yards, and sent a torpedo crashed into the tanker. The torpedo exploded in the after engineroom, drowning two of the eleven men remaining aboard. After the submarine had disappeared, the two lifeboats took aboard the nine survivors of the skeleton crew and pulled for the coast. Twelve hours later, they reached Blunts Reef Lightship.

When interviewed by the press Captain Farrow and his crew called the attack, "shameful and ruthless," as they charged the Japanese with deliberately shelling their lifeboats before they could be lowered. "If they had been armed," they boasted, "we would have had a good chance against the submarine," as she was within easy range. [5]

Emidio refused to sink, however. Drifting northward with the current, she came ashore on Steamboat Rock, near the entrance to Crescent City harbor, on the night of December 25. Hundreds of people crowded Battery Point the next day to view the wreck. The tanker's bow was out of the water, and her after portion was submerged. One of the curious reported, "The bridge and forward deck are out of the water, the ship's stack with the letter, G, rising out of the water at the stern, which appears to be riding on the rocky bottom. The bow moves with the rise and fall of the waves." [6]

Emidio drifted free on Wednesday, January 14, and wallowed in the entrance to the harbor, threatening to run down the craft at anchor in Fish Harbor. To prevent the derelict from becoming a "Flying Dutchman," Leo Ward was taken out to the hulk and released its anchor. Although the vessel was in custody of the United States Coast Guard, Ward was interested in the possibility of salvaging the vessel, and he had contacted officials of General Petroleum in San Pedro. He believed the bow of Emidio was sound, and if the after portion could be raised with pontoons or cut away, the craft could be salvaged. [7]

R. C. Porter of San Francisco made a better offer for the hulk than Ward, and he acquired salvage rights to Emidio. He hired a crew of local fishermen and boats to carry out the project. Porter, however, failed to notify the Coast Guard of his plan, and he and his men were fired on by the guard as they sought to board the wreck. After identifying themselves, they were allowed to proceed. The anchor chain was cut, and the tides carried the hulk toward Fauntleroy Rock. [8] Nine years were to pass before the rusty bow was finally broken up for scrap, and the forward bollards placed at the foot of H Street as a memorial. [9]

B. JAPANESE SUBMARINES RETURN

Two enemy submarines were off the Pacific coast in February 1942. The first to arrive, I-8, patrolled northward from the Golden Gate to the Washington coast without encountering any shipping, and then returned to her home port. The second was I-17, a large plane-carrying submarine. I-17 arrived off San Diego about February 19. Four days later, on the 23d, just as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was beginning a "fireside chat," she surfaced off the California coast, near Santa Barbara, and from a range of 2,500 yards pumped 13 rounds of 5-1/2-inch shell into the oil installations. Damage, however, was negligible. She then headed northward and cruised the Humboldt Coast before returning to Japan. [10]

The night after I-17 shelled the oil installations near Santa Barbara, there occurred the "Battle of Los Angeles." Tensions had been building up for some time as agitation for removal of resident Japanese from coastal California had mounted. At 2 a.m. word spread that an unidentified plane had appeared on a radarscope bearing in from the Pacific toward Los Angeles. A blackout was ordered and all antiaircraft units alerted. The guns roared into action at 3 a.m., the first shot aimed at a balloon (probably a meteorological balloon over Santa Monica). Within the next hour, the gunners expended over 1,400 rounds of ammunition against a variety of "targets" in the Los Angeles area. Exhaustive hearings led to the conclusion by the army that from one to five unidentified planes had penetrated the area, whereas the navy decided that there had been no excuse for the firing. [11]

Fears were voiced on the Pacific coast, following the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942, that the Japanese would retaliate. Steps were accordingly taken by the United States to beef up its west coast defenses. Victory over a powerful Japanese task force at Midway on June 4, 1942, with the loss of four enemy aircraft carriers, all but ended the threat of a serious attack on the west coast. In effect the Battle of Midway restored the balance of naval power in the Pacific, which the Japanese had upset at Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese occupation of the western Aleutian Islands (Kiska, Attu, and Agattu) in June 1942 caused some members of the American military to fear a further Japanese thrust toward the Alaskan mainland. Japanese submarine operations helped spark these apprehensions. In conjunction with the air attack on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of the western Aleutians, two of the big plane-carrying submarines, I-25 and I-26, had been sent to reconnoiter to the south of Alaska. I-26 at the end of May departed from the neighborhood of Kodiak Island and made her way toward the Washington coast. One Japanese source claims that the reconnaissance plane of I-26 "scouted Seattle Harbor and reported no heavy men-of-war, particularly carriers, there." [12]

On June 20 the Japanese established their presence by torpedoing a Canadian lumber schooner southwest of Cape Flattery and then shelling the Canadian radio compass station at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island. The next night, June 21-22, a submarine sent six to nine 5-1/2-inch shells crashing into the Fort Stevens Military Reservation in Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia, inflicting neither casualties nor damage. This bombardment, insignificant in itself, was the first foreign attack on a continental military installation since the War of 1812. On June 23 two torpedoes missed a tanker off the southern coast of Oregon. [13]

The final Japanese submarine patrol off the Pacific coast was undertaken in reprisal for the Doolittle raid. I-25, with its reconnaissance plane equipped for bombing, reached the coast near the California-Oregon boundary at the end of August 1942. On September 9 the plane dropped an incendiary bomb into a heavily wooded area on a mountain slope, near Brookings, Oregon. The bomb started a forest fire, but it was quickly brought under control by fire-fighters. I-25, after staying out of sight of American forces charged with her destruction, attacked with torpedoes and sank two tankers on October 4 and 6 off the coast of southern Oregon. These attacks marked an end to submarine warfare off the west coast. [14]

C. FREE BALLOON OPERATIONS

Lacking the industrial and technical know-how to strike at the United States with rockets, the Japanese soon after the Doolittle Raid made plans to take advantage of the jet stream and prevailing winds to attack the United States with free balloons. The balloon bomb was Japan's V-I. While preparations were started in 1942, this method of attack was probably undertaken more as an encouragement to homefront morale than as a method of crippling the American war effort. After the war, a Japanese officer reported:

The bag part of the balloons which were being sent to America consisted of hundreds of small pieces of paper . . . . These pieces were made by school children all over Japan, gathered up village by village, and shipped to a central assembly place for reshipment to the factory where the balloons were finally completed. [15]

In the period October 1944 to August 1945, the Japanese launched about 9,300 of these balloons from the Sendai area of northern Honshu. The bags of the balloons were 33-1/2 feet in diameter and lifted various mechanisms and a load of from 25 to 65 pounds of incendiary and anti-personnel bombs. The first of these free balloons, which were capable of crossing the Pacific in four days, was recovered from the ocean off San Pedro on November 13. About 90 of these balloons were recovered in the continental United States between November 1944 and V-J Day. Some of them drifted as far east as Michigan and south into Mexico. Many landed in Alaska and Canada. As a weapon they were a failure, because they did almost no damage, and there is no proven instance of these bombs starting a forest fire. The only casualties caused by the free balloons occurred at Bly, Oregon, on May 5, 1945, when a woman and five children on a Sunday School picnic were killed when they tried to disassemble a bomb. [16]

D. BEACH PATROLS and OTHER DEFENSES*

During the first months of World War II, as one allied bastion after another fell to the Japanese in the western and southwest Pacific, the United States greatly strengthened its Western Defense Command. By the end of May and before the victory at Midway, the equivalent of 17 antiaircraft regiments were in position in the three west coast states. Six barrage balloon battalions were deployed in the Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego areas. Medium and heavy bombers, long-range patrol craft, and fighters were flown in. Radar stations were built at strategic points and manned. Beach patrols were organized by the Coast Guard. Volunteers assisted the Coast Guard in watching the beaches.

As soon as the extent and significance of the Japanese defeat at Midway became apparent, the army began to reduce the strength of the force assembled for defense of the west coast. First to go were the heavy and medium bombers, to be followed by several of the antiaircraft regiments. [17]

To patrol the beaches north and south of the Klamath, the Coast Guard established a camp on the bluffs two miles south of the Klamath. An observation station* was built of cinderblocks. This station had false roofs. From the air or the road, the buildings looked like a barn and farmhouse. Many of the older men from the Klamath area, such as Ray Chaffey, served as civilian volunteers with the Coast Guard. They stood watches and patrolled the beach, thus relieving members of the Coast Guard for duty overseas. [18]

E. COMMENTS and RECOMMENDATIONS

World War II occurred a generation ago. It is now a part of our heritage and, because of the large numbers of veterans and their families, sites associated with it possess high visitor interest. Redwood National Park is closely identified with the Japanese submarine offensive in December 1941 and September and October 1942, and the free balloon assaults of the last year of the war.

It is therefore recommended that the World War II observation station on the cliff, south of the Klamath, be restored and employed to interpret the aforementioned activities, and the successful efforts of the United States to cope with these threats. To insure an accurate restoration, Historic Structures Reports should be programmed for the observation station. The structures constituting the observation station will be included on the List of Classified Structures.

ENDNOTES

1. Japanese Monograph 97, Pearl Harbor Operations: General Outline of Orders and Plans, app. I.

2. Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, U. S. Army in World War II—The Western Hemisphere, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, 1964), p. 86; Samuel E. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931-April 1942 (Boston, 1947), p. 221. U. S. Army Transport Cynthia Olsen was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine about 1,000 miles northeast of Oahu on December 7; S. S. Lahaina was shelled and sent to the bottom about 700 miles on the same bearing on December 11; S. S. Manimi was torpedoed and sunk December 17, not far from Honolulu; and S. S. Prusa was torpedoed and sunk, December 19, 150 miles south of Hawaii.

3. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, p. 221.

4. Conn, Engelman, & Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, p. 87.

5. Del Norte Triplicate, Dec. 26, 1941. The five casualties in the attack on Emidio were: Assistant Engineer B. A. Winters and Fireman K. K. Kines of San Pedro killed in the explosion of the torpedo; and Seaman F. W. Potts, Messboy S. McGilvary, and R. S. Pennington blown overboard and drowned. There were 31 survivors.

6. Ibid. Emidio had come ashore on the southwest side of Steamboat Rock, and about 440 yards off-shore from the harbor entrance light.

7. Ibid., Jan. 16, 1942.

8. Ibid., Jan. 23, 1942. Oil seeping from the wreck plagued the local crab fishermen.

9. Coan, "Sea Takes its Toll as Death Stalks Marine History of Del Norte," Del Norte Triplicate, Centennial Edition (1954), p. 5-E.

10. Japanese Monograph 102, pp. 16-17.

11. Conn, Engelman, & Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, pp. 87-88.

12. U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Interrogations of Japanese Officials (2 vols, Washington, 1946), Interview 97, Comdr. Masatake Okumiya, Oct. 10, 1945.

13. Japanese Monograph 110, pp. 21-23; Conn, Engelman & Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, p. 92.

14. Japanese Monograph 110, pp. 32-33.

15. Conn, Engelman, & Fairchild, Guiding the United States and Its Outposts, p. 113.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., pp. 89, 91, 93; Malcolm F. Willoughby, The United States Coast Guard in World War II (Annapolis, 1957), pp. 48-53.

18. Personal Interview Chaffey with Bearss, April 26, 1969.