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He says the U.S. Navy 'is slack'
to let civilians sit at sub controlsNavy tightens rules on
civilians aboard subsAssociated Press
UWAJIMA, Japan -- Amid rising anger and distrust, Japan's defense minister today called it "outrageous" that civilians were at the controls of a U.S. Navy submarine when it smashed into a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii.
Navy tightens rules
The U.S. Navy "is slack" in allowing civilians to sit at control stations in the sub, said Defense Agency chief Toshitsugu Saito, whose post is equivalent to defense minister.
The Japanese public shared his anger, particularly in this remote southwestern fishing village, home to students still missing from the disaster.
Ietaka Horita, principal of the high school that owned the boat, said he was "enraged" to hear that civilians were at the sub's controls and that he found out about it from media reports, not government investigators.
This morning, the Foreign Ministry's second-highest official, Seishiro Eto, met at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy de Leon.
The Coast Guard gave Eto a rundown of its response to the accident, including the rescue of 26 people and efforts to find those still missing, Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said.Eto was to hold talks at the State Department later today.
Horita, who returned from Hawaii last night, said it was painful to come back with nine people still missing from the collision.
"The top priority for me is to see that they are rescued, and I need to know who is responsible," he said, wiping away tears with a handkerchief.
U.S. regional Consul-General Robert Ludan visited Ehime state Gov. Moriyuki Kato today to apologize.
He was the first U.S. official to visit the state and issue a public apology. They met privately afterward.
"We are determined to find out what actually happened," Ludan said in Uwajima. "We are committed to investigating the cause as quickly as possible. We'll do our best to make sure it never happens again."
The governor gave him a letter for U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley demanding recovery of the ship, utmost efforts to find the missing and a full and thorough explanation to the families of what happened.
"Even though it might eventually become clear that there's little hope, families want to actually see their dead and hug them, to help them come to terms with it," Horita said.
Ludan said he could not comment on the issue of compensation.
In Tokyo, Ambassador Foley, whose 3-year stint in Tokyo ends in a few weeks, said military and diplomatic cooperation between the United States and Japan will survive the furor over the Ehime Maru.
"While it has caused anger and anguish in Japan, the U.S.-Japan security relationship is based on ... history and on common interests, and it will survive and be sustained," Foley said in an interview at the embassy.
The accident has fueled resentment over the U.S. military presence in Okinawa and recent crimes associated with them.
"It is a U.S. Navy submarine, (and) somehow all these concerns about breaches of discipline in Okinawa have become sort of associated I suppose in the public mind," he said.
But he said there was nothing American officials could do to further express their regrets.
"The president has apologized to the Japanese people, I have apologized to the Japanese people, the secretary of defense has apologized and also the secretary of state," Foley said.
"I don't know how the U.S. government and the people of the United States can more adequately express their regrets and deepest apologies," he added.
Relatives of the nine people missing in the sinking of the Ehime Maru viewed debris recovered by the Coast Guard. Families view Ehime Maru debris
Star-Bulletin staff
The Coast Guard said it recovered life-saving equipment but the only personal item was a cigarette lighter. All the items were found during the first day and a half of searching.
The relatives boarded buses at the Pagoda Hotel this morning and were taken to the Coast Guard Station at Sand Island, where the wreckage is stored.
The Coast Guard said it searched 21,000 square miles around Hawaii. Nine people -- four high school students, two teachers and three crewmembers -- have been missing since the ship sank last Friday.
Two family members skipped this morning's viewing and returned to Japan.
WASHINGTON -- Navy submarine commanders have been ordered not to perform emergency surfacing drills with civilians aboard, pending the outcome of investigations into a submarine collision with a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii, Navy officials said today. Navy tightens rules on
civilians aboard subsStar-Bulletin staff and wire reports
As a precaution, submarine commanders also are not allowed to permit civilians at control stations, the officials said.
Yesterday, President Bush said he would ask Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to review all the services' policies on allowing civilians to participate in military exercises, considered one of the Pentagon's most effective public relations tools.
Civilians were at the controls of two important stations aboard a nuclear attack submarine, the USS Greeneville, when it collided with a Japanese fishing vessel last Friday during a rapid surfacing maneuver off Honolulu. Nine people aboard the fishing boat are missing and presumed dead. But the Navy says there is no evidence that the civilians played a role in the collision.
Pentagon officials said a preliminary Navy investigation of the submarine collision may be finished within days. Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, will then decide whether the findings warrant court-martialing the sub's captain or crew.
Fargo will have several options: He could ask for more information before taking action, he could convene a board of inquiry to take sworn statements or he could move directly toward a court martial.
The Japan-America Society of Hawaii has collected more than $17,000 for the families of the nine missing from the Ehime Maru. Ehime Maru fund reaches $17,000
Star-Bulletin
The Japan-America Society of Hawaii, a nonprofit organization, began the Ehime Maru Fund on Monday, and the First Hawaiian Bank Foundation donated $10,000.
The organizations warn that no telephone solicitation is being done. Radio KZOO, a local Japanese radio station, received three calls yesterday from Japanese senior citizens saying they received calls from someone who knew their name and asked for cash donations.
Monetary donations may be made at any First Hawaiian Bank branch, with a tax-deductible check made out to "Japan-America Society of Hawaii."
Checks also can be mailed to the Japan-America Society, P.O. Box 1796, Honolulu, HI 96806, or to First Hawaiian Bank, P.O. Box 3200, Honolulu, HI 96847.
For tax-exemption reasons, indicate on the check that the donation is for the Ehime Maru Fund.
Limitations in tracking ability
Several submarine veterans, including three retired admirals, said it was hard to fathom how the Greeneville's crew could have failed to detect the fishing trawler when it was so close, at least based on new information from the civilians and the Pentagon.One possibility, they said, was that the Greeneville's officers had failed to raise the periscopes high enough to catch sight of the 191-foot trawler.
Submarine veterans also said that if the fishing trawler was moving at 11 knots, as its captain has said, it should have been making enough noise to register on the Greeneville's sophisticated passive sonar systems.
But they said that there can be limitations in the ability to track vessels that are either directly in front or behind a submarine.
"Without knowing more about the acoustic conditions, it's very hard to know why they didn't detect them," said retired Vice Admiral Bernard M. Kauderer, a former commander of submarines in the Atlantic Fleet.
At a briefing yesterday, the National Transportation Safety Board said it had decided to interview all 16 civilians who had been visiting the Greeneville when the submarine performed an "emergency main ballast blow," in which the submarine surfaced underneath the Japanese training vessel.
Since many of the civilians have left Hawaii, NTSB member John Hammerschmidt said the interviews were likely to be held during the next week or so.
Search to continue
The Coast Guard also reversed a decision yesterday to suspend a search-and-rescue operation for the nine Japanese crew members, said spokesman Lt. Greg Fondran."We realize that there's diminishing hope each day for survivors on the surface," Fondran said.
But the Coast Guard said they are no longer planning search patterns and will focus on assisting the Navy with a possible recovery operation.
The Japanese Consul General to Hawaii, Minoru Shibuya, spoke to reporters yesterday and urged a continued search for the nine people still missing.
"We welcome the underwater search under way by the United States government," he said.
He said officials in the Japanese government have been satisfied with cooperation, support and apologies from the United States, but are concerned that the U.S. Navy withheld the information that two of the civilians had been in key helm positions when the submarine sank the Ehime Maru.
"We strongly protested that this information wasn't given to the Japanese side before that," Shibuya said.
If civilians played any role in the collision, "it is an inexcusable situation," he added.
Shibuya said the incident shouldn't affect Japanese-American relations, despite a strong backlash against America.
"After this kind of incident, people can become very emotional," he said, calling hostility against the United States by the Japanese public "inevitable."
"We try to overcome these difficulties," he said.
Star-Bulletin reporters Treena Shapiro and Harold Morse
and The New York Times contributed to this report.
