Look, up in the Sky... it's a Bird... it's a Plane... Holy Cow! It's a Japanese Submariner!

Since 10-16-04

by Robert James Homme, M.A.

Author's Note: I came across this story while performing some W.W.II research for the centennial and, although it is not about U.S. submariners, it speaks to the courage and resourcefulness of the submariners of all nations.

In spite of the outcome of the Battle of Midway the Japanese Admiralty clung tenaciously to the desire to attack the continental U.S. Of course the responsibility to execute such a feat of daring fell to the Japanese submarine force. At the start of the war, 11 of the Japanese submarines in commission were outfitted with deck hangers to carry single-engine, catapult-launched, floatplanes that were capable of flying 1.5 hours to target and back or 3 total hours of reconnaissance. These small craft had a top air speed of only about 100 knots. They were stored for transport in 12 separate pieces and assembled just prior to launch. Recovery took place when the aircraft returned to the mother ship, landed nearby on its floats, was disassembled and re-stowed. These aircraft were called geta because of the resemblance of their floats to a common Japanese clog-like shoe of the same name.

While originally designed to assist the host submarine in long range reconnaissance missions for the fleet, a resourceful submariner eventually concluded that by attaching a few bombs to the aircraft, the geta might be put to a more lethal use. This idea is attributed to Warrant Officer Nubuo Fujita who was then stationed aboard the Japanese submarine, I-25. While Fujita’s original idea was to arm the geta for use in assisting attacks upon the U.S. surface ships in fleet actions - he believed that by doing this he could not only find the ships but attack them as well - when the Japanese Admiralty got wind of the idea, it had a grander mission in mind.

Briefed by no less a personage than Prince Takamatsu, the Emperor’s brother, Fujita was instructed to test his theory’s effectiveness on the American mainland itself! However daring this mission would be, it quickly became one of strategic convolution - rather than a direct attack on one of the many targets of significance along the U.S. west coast, the orders given to Fujita was, incredulously, to bomb the forest approximately 75 miles north of the California border!

The reason for the Japanese Admiralty’s decision was recorded as "Rather than inflicting limited damage on industrial targets, since the northwestern U.S. is full of forests, we will start a blaze in the deep woods. The resulting forest fire will be very difficult to stop. Whole towns will be destroyed and it will create panic among the population."

After many months of training and fitting out the geta, the I-25 began its slow transit of the Pacific. It arrived off the coast of Oregon in the waning days of August 1942. Ten days were spent on station by the anxious crew with seas too high to launch the floatplane. Finally, it calmed sufficiently to execute the mission. On September 9, 1942, Warrant Officer Fujita and his observer, Petty Officer Shoji Okuda boarded their geta and set off on a heading to inland Oregon.

Flying 50 miles inland undetected, Fujita and Okuda did, indeed, become the first and only enemy mission to successfully bomb the continental U.S. during W.W.II. They returned safely to the I-25 to report that "both bombs exploded perfectly [and] two large fires are spreading." However, what Japanese intelligence either did not know or failed to account for was that the target area in Oregon had been saturated with several weeks of recent rains. The fires quickly burned themselves out with negligible damage to the forests and none to any population centers or industrial targets. The bombing was a closely kept secret in the U.S. and had virtually no effect on the American population.

About the Author Robert James Homme is a Vietnam Era Submarine Veteran and has a graduate degree in History from Florida International University. Robert has published professionally in a variety of magazines throughout Florida and academically in the Atlantic Millennium (formerly the Southeastern Historical Journal). He is a dual honor society member of OMICRON DELTA KAPPA and PHI ALPHA THETA.