Lieutenant Kermit Taylor’s eyes lit up when he saw the picture on the screen: there was a huge point of light 132 miles north of Oahu, Hawaii.
It was just after 7:02 a.m., and the cadre of night shift personnel at Fort Shafter’s Aircraft Information Center were also confused by the readings Taylor noticed.
Could their radar equipment be malfunctioning? How many planes are coming?
And most importantly – are they Americans?
It was December 7, 1941, and the fatal events that followed shocked the world and plunged the United States into World War II.
At the same time, as the American crew watched the radar, a 40-ton small submarine was plowing through the waves nearby. Bill Newcott wrote for National Geographic magazine that the submarine’s combat number was HA-19.
Even before the first Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, HA-19 and four other Type A Kō-hyōteki class midget submarines were destined to deliver the first blow against the “sleeping giant” in the harbor.
However, most people don’t get this far.
“Because the midget submarines had to surface frequently for fresh air, four of them were spotted by patrol boats and destroyed by depth charges,” Newcott wrote.
It was here – just on the edge of the harbor – that the United States mounted its first fierce defense of Pearl Island – not from ferocious modern destroyers, but from the USS Ward, a Weeks-class destroyer from a seemingly bygone era – a ship first launched in 1918.
Sadly, however, Ward’s crew’s accident report was not taken seriously. If anything, the United States would not have been caught off guard by the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“I’m not at all certain that this was an actual attack,” Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, later said of Ward’s report.
At least one midget submarine entered the harbor before being sunk by the USS Monaghan, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.
The HA-19, on the other hand, never even came close.
The two crew members inside the HA-19, Second Lieutenant Kazuo Sakamaki and Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki, encountered difficulties from the start. Their gyrocompass didn’t work, and they spent the early hours of December 7 bumping along the rocks and coral reefs outside Pearl Harbor.
In fact, when the Japanese bombing began, the HA-19 was there—stuck.
That’s where the USS Helm discovered the sunken ship and opened fire, according to the National World War II Museum.
“As Inagaki submerged the sub, the shells landed close enough to knock Sakamaki unconscious. After pulling themselves together, the two men tried again to enter the harbor, striking the sub’s bow to the point that the torpedoes would no longer fire. Seawater entered through the HA-19’s crushed nose and slowly began to surround the battery, which was now emitting toxic fumes,” the museum writes.
With no chance of survival on the doomed ship, the two decided to abandon ship and prepare for hand-to-hand combat once ashore.
But before they could react, the smoke engulfed the two, rendering them unconscious. They woke up that night and missed the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Only Sakami made it ashore alive. Inagaki drowned after trying to detonate explosives to destroy a midget submarine.
After Sakamaki climbed ashore, he soon came face to face with the point of an American rifle. He asked to be killed, but the American soldiers refused to acquiesce.
Thus, Sakamaki had the dubious distinction of being the first Japanese prisoner of war in World War II.
Since that infamous day, four of the five Japanese midget submarines have been discovered, with HA-19 currently on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.
Some historians controversially believe that one of the midget submarines successfully fired a torpedo at the USS Oklahoma or USS West Virginia and may still be lurking deep in the harbor.
Even so, “there were 300 aircraft and five midget submarines in the air,” Robert Citino, senior historian at the National World War II Museum, told History.com. “Even if each ship takes a direct hit, the number of munitions flying in the air is much greater than the number of munitions gliding on the seafloor. Under this effect, the submarine becomes a footnote.”