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‘Upset’ survivors Sakichi Atsuta was in the bathroom when he felt the first bump. Then came a second, stronger jolt, which knocked the lights out. On the third boom, Atsuta could see the 360-foot-long USS Greeneville outside, lurching like a whale. He rushed to the ship's bridge, water gushing in. Hanging onto a rail, he felt the boat sinking.
recall disaster
Fourteen of the 26 Ehime Maru
survivors recount the
harrowing experience
Hope fading in Japan
By Janine Tully
Star-BulletinShukuo Nakamura was on deck looking out with binoculars when his fishing vessel was hit. At the second jolt, he knew "something was terribly wrong," and rushed to the bridge. Emerging from the water, like a sea monster, was the Greeneville. "I yelled to the rest of the crew to come up to the bridge, but a wave swept the men away," Nakamura said. "I noticed lifeboats in the water and saw some students grabbing onto them."
The Ehime Maru sank within 10 minutes after colliding with the Greeneville, about 10 miles from Diamond Head on Friday.
Fifteen survivors flew home to Japan today. The captain is the only survivor remaining. Nine crewmen, including four teenagers, remain lost at sea.
For close to an hour during a news conference at the Japanese Cultural Center yesterday, 14 of the 26 survivors of the 190-foot vessel recounted the frightening aftermath of the collision. They all wore blue T-shirts; grief showed on their faces.
The captain of the Ehime Maru, Hisao Onishi, was not present because of exhaustion, said Ietaka Horita, principal of Uwajima Fisheries High School. Horita, who flew to Honolulu to comfort his students, said exhaustion was prevalent among the crew. He also expressed concern about the emotional state of some students.
"I can sense they are still upset," Horita said through a translator.
The survivors reiterated their hopes that the nine missing men and teenagers are found, and endorsed requests that their vessel be raised from the bottom of the ocean.
Crew members recounted the minutes after the collision -- about hearing three loud booms, followed by a blackout and people screaming as water gushed in. They recalled men desperately grabbing at life rafts floating in choppy waters slick with oil from the ship's engine room.
"After the second bump, everything was happening so fast," said 1st class navigator Ryoichi Miya.
Hidekatsu Kimura, an engineer, was in bed when the ship was first hit. The second jolt sounded like metal objects clashing against each other, he said. He heard people urging those below to go upstairs, but by the time he reached the deck, water was up to his knees.
He still managed to help others deploy life rafts.
For some survivors, the sequence of events remains blurry, a bad dream to forget.
Masao Murai, who was on the bridge, saw the sub lunging forward soon after the second jolt. He remembers the power going off and being swept to sea. "I don't remember much after that," he said.
Hope fading UWAJIMA, Japan -- For years, Toshiya Sakashima has been a popular student in this remote town where many people make their living from the sea, even though he admitted that he couldn't swim and would have to find a job suitable for a landlubber.
in Japanese
fishing town
'The people in our town are
getting angry at the United States,'
says a municipal officialBy Mari Yamaguchi
Associated PressIn Uwajima, which prides itself on its ruggedness and self-sufficiency, the teen-ager was known as a star of his junior high school brass band.
Even after he enrolled in Uwajima Fisheries High School, he often returned to his old school to help the new kids in its band.
Last month, his generosity led him to put his fear of the ocean aside to join his high school classmates on a fishing expedition and training cruise off Hawaii.
On Friday, when their school boat collided with a U.S. Navy submarine and sank off Hawaii, Takashima, 17, was one of nine people who remained missing.
As the search continued for Takashima and the other missing, bitterness over the accident, and the way the U.S. military has handled it, was growing in Uwajima, from the neighborhoods of the missing boys, to local mom-and-pop stores, to the editorial page of the town newspaper.
"I would like to believe that Toshiya is still alive, treading water some place in the Pacific off Hawaii," said Fumihisa Ueda, a city assemblyman whose daughter was a classmate of Toshiya's and a member of his junior high school band.
"But our hopes are fading, and the people in our town are getting angry at the United States."
Like many other people in Uwajima, Ueda said rescue workers didn't help the survivors soon enough and still haven't raised the sunken fishing boat to search it for bodies.
Anger over the accident was especially strong in the many parts of the town where people make a living growing cultured pearls. Many people in these areas are related or have known each other for years.
In today's local newspaper, the Ehime, an editorial blamed the accident on a "reckless exercise by the U.S. military."
It also criticized Japan's government for accepting a U.S. apology without pressing harder for an explanation about what happened.
In Tokyo, the political fallout from the accident is evident in increasing criticism of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, Mori's closest aide, reversed his earlier opinion on Mori's decision to finish a round of golf after learning of the tragedy.
"I think he should not have been playing golf," Fukuda said. "What is being questioned is the political attitude."
A day earlier Fukuda defended Mori, saying the prime minister asked officials to quickly gather information as soon as he heard about it.
"What should initially be done, was done," Fukuda said then.
Mori has shown no sign that he plans to step down before elections to be held by the end of July.
Since taking office in April, Mori's public support ratings have fallen steadily, standing now at about 14 percent.
Throughout Uwajima, it was hard today to find a store, a home or even a taxi cab where people weren't watching news shows about the accident on big televisions or portable ones.
Emotions ran especially high in a neighborhood of the city where one boy, Katsuya Nomoto, remains missing, and his cousin, survivor Choichiro Yokoyama, returned home from Hawaii last night.
Although reporters were kept away from the boys' homes, neighbors were outspoken.
"It's nice to have Cho-kun (Little Cho) back," said Yukimi Yokoyama, a grocery store owner who knew the boys.
She said the inseparable friends often swam and fished together in the ocean.
"The sub is responsible for the accident, 100 percent, and I'm annoyed that the U.S. officials are spending all their time saying what they will do in the investigation and search for the sunken boat, without actually doing it," she said.
Last night, children in the neighborhood delivered small paper origami ornaments they had designed to Nomoto's house saying they still hope he will be rescued.