Antony Trew
Yashimoto's Last Dive
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Two Hours to Darkness
Smoke Island
The Sea Break
The White Schooner
Towards the Tamarind Trees
The Moonraker Mutiny
Kleber’s Convoy
The Zhukov Briefing
Ultimatum
Death of a Supertanker
The Antonov Project
Sea Fever
Running Wild
Bannister’s Chart
The C-in-C Eastern Fleet had further reason to be perturbed by losses in the Indian Ocean. Many sinkings by the Japanese were marked by atrocities. The blood lust of their submarine commanders seems to have grown as their losses multiplied… it was commonplace for ships’ crews to be machine-gunned in boats and rafts.
One
The clouds obscured the moon and for that he was thankful; it was no friend to a submarine running on the surface. As it was, the darkness was broken by no more than tumbling flashes of phosphorescence along the sides as I-357’s bows sliced through the sea. The only sounds of the night were the mechanical clatter of diesels, occasional squeaks from the revolving aerial abaft the periscope standards, and the splash and swish of broken water. Whatever conversation there might have been earlier, there was none now that the Captain had come up. Taciturn, crop-haired, bearded like the rest of the crew, Commander Togo Yashimoto was a strict disciplinarian whose views were well known: the survival of I-357 and all who served in her hung upon a slender thread of vigilance; conversation unrelated to duty diminished vigilance; for these reasons it was, as he emphasized in his standing order book, a most serious breach of discipline.
A breeze off the land did something to relieve the torpor of the night, bringing with it the musky, spice-laden odours of tropical Africa. To Yashimoto the smell was a pleasant one, redolent of the Straits of Malacca, waters he knew well, for the submarine was based on Penang, four and a half thousand miles to the north-east. Unless the unforeseen happened, he hoped to be back there by mid-December. That was a little less than a month away. Penang promised several weeks of unbroken nights, freedom from the stress of danger, regular baths, daily shaves, clean clothes, good food and drink with fresh fruit and vegetables, the company of brother officers of his own seniority, and the comfort of Masna’s warm thighs, her pleasant chatter and other tender attentions. There would, too, be letters; mostly from his wife in Kure with family news. Indeed, there was much to look forward to. Pleasant as these thoughts were they were soon displaced by others of a graver nature. They concerned a problem which had nagged at him for days. And now as he settled his forearms on the bridge screen to steady the binoculars with which he searched the darkness, the problem once again began to fill his mind. Before dealing with it, however, there was a matter of routine to be attended to.
‘Time of sunrise?’ he asked, without lowering the binoculars. Fitted with high-resolution night lenses they were standard issue for the Japanese submarine service.
‘0526, sir,’ replied the officer who stood beside him on the bridge. Ito Kagumi was not only officer-of-the-watch but I-357’s First Lieutenant. Ichiro Noguchi, the Acting SubLieutenant on watch with him, had twitched involuntarily at the Captain’s question. It was a trap; Yashimoto would have known the time of sunrise before reaching the bridge. The times of setting and rising of the sun and moon were shown on a slate above the chart-table. Lieutenant Sato, the Navigating Officer, chalked them up each morning before going on watch. Yashimoto never failed to look at the chart and slate before coming to the bridge. Nor did he ever fail to make this ritual check with the officer-of-the-watch. And woe betide any who got it wrong. Noguchi had done so on the first few days of the patrol.
‘Submarines dive at dawn,’ Yashimoto had barked, the frozen stare terrifying the unfortunate Noguchi. ‘They dive because daylight is an even greater danger than incompetent officers. To know the time of sunrise is essential to survival.’ The Captain’s short, thickset body had stiffened, the lower lip jutting aggressively. ‘You will therefore, at noon each day, for the next three weeks, give me in writing the times of rising and setting of the sun and moon.’
Yashimoto lowered his binoculars and moved towards the after end of the conning-tower, checking as he went that the lookouts had their night glasses trained on the sectors allocated to them. He felt his way past the periscope standards, reached the anti-aircraft gun-platform abaft the conning-tower, steadied himself against its guardrail and searched astern with binoculars. His mind was not so much concerned with what might be out there in the darkness, as with the problem he had tussled with over the last few days.
The more he thought about it the more certain he became that there was only one solution. Outbursts of hysteria in the control-room could under exceptional circumstances be tolerated, though they were bad for morale and threatened the safety of the submarine. But hysteria while I-357 was under attack, coupled with physical interference with men carrying out their duties at the controls, was an offence of the gravest nature. The young reservist, fresh out of Tokyo University, should never have been drafted into the submarine service; nor would he have been, reflected Yashi-moto, but for the influence of an uncle, a rear-admiral, who had distinguished himself in submarines.
Yashimoto was a career officer steeped in the samurai tradition, the son and grandson of naval officers, all men of the samurai caste. In 1905 his father had fought at the Battle of Tsushima Strait, the greatest sea engagement in the history of naval warfare. In that battle the Japanese Fleet, commanded by Admiral Togo, had sunk six of the eight Russian battleships, captured two, and sunk or captured most of the remaining ships of the Russian Fleet. This for the loss of three Japanese torpedo boats. Against more than 11,000 Russians, killed or captured, the Japanese had lost 117 men. Yashimoto’s father had served on Admiral Togo’s staff at Tsushima and had in due course given his son the prestigious first name of Togo.
Yashimoto’s upbringing and naval training had been dominated by this background. Bushido, the way of the warrior, had been evolved by the samurai: loyalty, honour, discipline, were the foundations of the warrior code, one which had been fundamental to Japanese naval tradition since the days of the Shimazu warships of the seventeenth century.
Standing by the guardrail with these thoughts in mind, he decided that, for the honour of the Imperial Japanese Navy, for his own honour, and no less for that of the guilty man, he must bring the matter to a conclusion. For him it had been a painful surprise that the offender had shown himself to be no samurai; it was the failure of the young man to commit seppuku, the implicit admission that he lacked the courage to purge dishonour with that ritual act of dis-embowelment, which had created Yashimoto’s problem. He sighed, shook his head, looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. The first pale shades of dawn were showing in the eastern sky. It was time to return to the bridge. On reaching it he spoke to Kagumi.