Cuttlefish
Posts: 2454
Joined: 1/24/2007
From: Oregon, USA
Status: offline
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September 1, 1943
Location: Tokyo
Course: Disbanded in port
Attached to: None
Mission: None
System Damage: 0
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 475
Orders: Await further orders
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Shiro gets liberty and spends much of the afternoon ashore. He spends most of the day strolling about the waterfront and shopping for small gifts to send home to his mother and sisters. At length he grows hungry, so he purchases a bento lunch from a street vendor and finds a bench near the water. There he sits and eats while watching the ships out in the bay.
Another sailor is also eating lunch nearby, and soon he and the friendly Shiro have struck up a conversation. The other man, as it turns out, is from the Otori-class escort ship Sagi. Like Hibiki, Sagi has just arrived in Tokyo at the end of a convoy run. The other sailor listens with envy to Shiro’s account of their peaceful run to Tokyo and back.
“I wish we had had that kind of luck,” he says. “Our voyage out was easy enough, but the return trip turned into a nightmare.”
“What happened?” asks Shiro.
“We were escorting twelve cargo ships,” says the other man. “But we had a strong escort. A seaplane tender, so we had air cover, and three other escorts besides Sagi. We picked up cargo in Palembang and Batavia, then came back through the Makassar Strait.”
“What kind of cargo?”
“The usual sort of thing. Resources, mostly,” says the sailor.
“Resources?” says Shiro.
“Yes, you know. Resources.”
“Ah,” says Shiro. “Please continue.”
“Well, we got through the strait all right,” says the sailor, “then cleared Mindanao and headed up the east coast of Luzon. That’s when the trouble started. One night a submarine got past all the escorts and put three torpedoes into one of the freighters. The ship went down almost immediately. We searched for the submarine, but no luck.”
“Were you able to save many of the crew?”
The sailor shakes his head. “Only a handful. Then just a few hours after dawn the same submarine came back, or maybe it was a different one. Hard to tell. Another freighter took a torpedo. This time we got a contact and dropped a few depth charges, but we couldn’t tell if we hit anything or not.
“The freighter that got hit was still afloat, but leaking badly. It was ordered to divert to Manila. We heard later that the ship almost made it before sinking.” Shiro shakes his head in sympathy.
“The next night, another attack,” continues the sailor. “Another freighter was hit. This time we got a solid contact and maybe did some damage to the submarine, but it got away in the end. The damaged freighter kept up with the convoy for a while, and we thought maybe we could save this one. But then something went wrong and a hatch was opened that should not have been, and then another hatch gave way. The flooding went out of control. We saved the entire crew, at least.”
“Three ships lost!” says Shiro.
“The other nine got through,” says the man. “The attacks stopped after we got into home waters.”
“We have had our share of encounters with enemy submarines,” comments Shiro, “but I had not realized the problem had gotten that bad.”
“It isn’t talked about much,” says the Sagi crewman. “I guess it would be bad for morale or something if the truth were known. Our trip was worse than most, but there do seem to be more of them out there every month.”
“I hope you have better luck on your next trip,” says Shiro.
“Thank you,” says the other man. “So do I!” They talk for a while longer, then leave to return to their respective ships. As Shiro returns to the docks he passes a couple of merchant seamen and makes a point to give them a friendly nod and greeting. Many in the Imperial Japanese Navy consider the merchant mariners to be a lesser breed and look down on them, but Shiro knows that their losses in both ships and men have been far higher in this war than the losses suffered by the Navy. And as far as he can tell dead in the war is dead, whether it happens aboard a battleship or aboard a leaky tramp steamer.
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RE: Small Ship, Big War - 
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