Ehime Maru slips
silently to ocean grave

The ill-fated ship now lies 6,000
feet down, ending a $60 million
salvage operation

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

Another chapter in the Navy's deadliest peacetime accident in the Pacific ended yesterday as the 830-ton Ehime Maru finally was allowed to rest in 6,000 feet of water.

Without fanfare at around 3:48 p.m., the crew of the barge Crowley cut the strap that held the Ehime Maru. Two sounding devices marked the final location of the wreck some 12 miles south of Kalaeloa.

The salvage operation recovered the bodies of eight of nine victims of the February collision involving a Pearl Harbor-based submarine. The body of student Takeshi Mizuguchi, 17, was never found despite a 20-day search by 60 Navy and six Japanese civilian divers.

Earl Okawa, executive officer with the Japan-America Society in Hawaii, said: "It's very, very difficult for the Mizuguchi family since, as things worked out, they weren't able to find their son's body. I know the Navy tried all it could do to recover it. It was very difficult for everyone."

Mizuguchi's relatives were believed to be among three victims' families allowed to view yesterday's operations from the deck of the Japanese submarine rescue vessel Chihaya.

The Ehime Maru was rammed Feb. 9 by the nuclear attack submarine USS Greeneville. The Greeneville's skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, was demonstrating a surfacing maneuver for 16 visiting civilians when the rudder of the 6,000-ton sub sliced into the ship.

Twenty-six people were saved in the incident, which sparked international controversy and forced the Navy to undertake an unprecedented $60 million recovery operation. The nine families pressed for the recovery of the bodies because of religious reasons.

With the Ehime Maru sitting in 2,000 feet of water where divers could not work, the Navy devised a special lifting cradle to raise the vessel and moved it 16 miles to shallower waters.

Ken Saiki, past president of the United Japanese Society, said, "It is with relief that eight of the nine bodies were recovered and given a proper cremation."

That feat alone surpassed the Navy's expectations. Based on eyewitness accounts, the Navy estimated that its divers would be able to find only five to seven of the missing. The body of one student believed to have been washed overboard was found wedged near the stern of the vessel.

Saiki and Okawa were part of a delegation that went to Ehime prefecture in May to present $160,000 in local donations to the government, officials of Uwajima Fisheries High School and representatives of the 26 survivors.

The United Japanese Society and Japan-America Society have been working with Ehime prefecture on a $65,000 black granite memorial to be located in Kakaako Waterfront Park.

Japanese officials would like the memorial -- which will feature one of the Ehime Maru's anchors -- to be dedicated on the anniversary of the accident next February.

More than 2,000 pieces of personal items belonging to the 36 crewmen, teachers and students were retrieved, along with the ship's two anchors, a mast, the nameplate and bell.

Still unresolved are numerous claims filed by survivors and relatives of the victims as well as requests by Ehime prefecture that the United States finance the building of another ship.

Several families also want Waddle, Greeneville crewmen and the embarked civilians to be forced to testify in court on the details of the accident. A three-admiral court of inquiry did not find cause last April for Waddle to be court-martialed.

Waddle was forced to give up his command and allowed to retire in October with his 20-year pension intact.