Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of World War II (39 page)

After the war ended, the U.S. Navy brought a captured
Seiran
to the United States for inspection. It spent nearly twenty years at California’s Alameda Naval Air Station, falling prey to souvenir hunters and sun exposure before being shipped to a storage facility at the National Air and Space Museum in 1962.

The Smithsonian Institution spent nearly $1 million and several years lovingly restoring the only surviving Aichi M6A1
Seiran
, which can be seen today at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

T
HE
S
EGUNDO
’
S NEW CAPTAIN
, L
T
. C
DR
. S
TEPHEN
L. J
OHNSON
, had his work cut out for him. Captain Fulp was beloved by his crew. He’d sunk 17 ships during four war patrols and had brought them back safely each time. Meanwhile he’d shaped his men into a high-functioning combat unit. It was a tough act to follow.

It didn’t help that Johnson made a poor first impression. A sub captain’s job was to prosecute the war, not win a popularity contest. Still, Johnson’s behavior put his men on edge. For example, Fulp never dove the sub before confirming that all the hatches were sealed. Johnson just dropped them in the hole without ever checking.
¹
The
Segundo
’s crew didn’t take such differences lightly. Johnson’s claim that they’d soon be tossing medals down the bridge hatch didn’t help matters. The last thing a crew wanted was to take unnecessary chances, especially with the war winding down. Was Johnson the guy who’d get them all killed? Nobody knew for sure.

If a sports team can’t succeed without a winning coach, the same can be said for a combat sub. Johnson’s lack of command presence made his crew uneasy. Some skippers were born with it; others instilled command presence through fear. Age had something to do with it. At 34, Fulp was confident and mature, while Johnson, four years younger, was still unformed. Fulp didn’t speak much, but what he did say counted for a lot. On the other hand, Johnson’s brash talk made him seem impetuous—not a good sign in a sub captain.

Johnson’s biggest battle though was being an unknown. More than one of the
Segundo
’s officers guessed it was his first command.
It was his third.
^*
These shortcomings meant the crew’s respect wouldn’t be given freely; Johnson would have to earn it. He might have been as tall as Captain Fulp, but no one thought he could fill Fulp’s shoes—at least, not yet.

I
T
’
S UNCLEAR WHETHER
Steve Johnson understood that his crew had doubts about him. If he did, he probably didn’t care. He had always done things his way regardless of what people thought. Whether by design or accident, one thing was clear: Steve Johnson had been raising hell almost from birth.

Stephen Lobdell Johnson was born in Chicago on August 10, 1915. The second son of John and Corrine Johnson, he’d lost both his father and his older brother to the 1918 influenza epidemic, when he was only three.
²
His mother eventually remarried. David Callahan was a dry goods wholesaler in his forties when he asked Corrine for her hand. Not much later he moved the family to Lafayette, Indiana, to be near his business.

Johnson was an adventurous kid with a daredevil streak a mile wide. One family story recalls him spitting into an open manhole, losing his balance, and falling in. That was Steve Johnson all over, doing something he shouldn’t and getting into trouble for it.

Having an active stepson was a big change for Callahan, who had been a bachelor most of his life. This probably explains why Johnson was shipped off to a military academy in Peekskill, New York. Johnson was only an average student though and required a postgraduate year at an Annapolis feeder school. It must have worked, because he passed the entrance exam and enrolled at the academy just one month shy of his nineteenth birthday.

For all their differences, Johnson and Fulp had some things in common. Like Fulp, Johnson was found to be academically deficient in his first term and bilged out of Annapolis. He was readmitted a year later, but unlike Fulp, his academic record continued
to decline. Importantly, Johnson’s fondness for breaking the rules put him in constant hot water. He received 39 demerits his first year. The next year this number increased to 44, including 20 for “hiding in closet … to skip drill.”
³
His third year was no better. He earned 53 demerits for various infringements and spent seven days “confined to ship.”
⁴
The trend was clearly heading in the wrong direction. By January of his senior year, Johnson had 56 demerits when he was caught returning from leave under the influence of alcohol.

The medical officer examining Johnson found the midshipman so inebriated, he couldn’t walk a straight line. The doctor also noted, somewhat damningly, that Johnson was in a jocular mood—further evidence he didn’t take things seriously.
⁵
Johnson received 100 demerits for his transgression,
⁶
which, combined with the 56 he’d already earned, put him over the permissible limit. He was immediately placed on probation for the remainder of the academic year. Johnson had bigger problems than unsatisfactory conduct, however. The academy’s new superintendent, Rear Adm. Wilson Brown, had it in for him.

Corrine Johnson pleaded her son’s case in a letter to the superintendent. “I do so deeply regret this whole affair … the finest citizens of Lafayette know [my son] to be honest, straightforward and worthy … if you would be so kind as to allow him to graduate with his class, I shall be truly grateful to you.”
⁷

The superintendent was not reassuring. “Your son’s future as a naval officer depends entirely upon himself,” Brown responded. If that was the case, Johnson’s goose was cooked.

That same day Superintendent Brown sent a memo to the acting secretary of the navy arguing Johnson be given a diploma but denied a commission. “There is doubt as to his … general dependability,” the superintendent wrote. Fortunately for Johnson, the request was denied, and he received both a bachelor of science degree as well as a commission in the U.S. Navy, despite earning three more demerits for being late to formation.

Johnson boasted of being his class’s “anchor man,” but, though
he graduated near the bottom of 581 midshipmen, he wasn’t last. There were five academic offenders with worse records behind him. He spent the next year and a half serving aboard the USS
Oklahoma
(BB-37) and the USS
Anderson
(DD-411).
⁸
Then he applied to the officer’s basic course at the U.S. naval sub school in Groton, Connecticut. As he later noted, “Many former friends consider the fact that I completed the course to be newsworthy.”
⁹
It should come as no surprise that Johnson graduated thirtieth out of a class of 43.

It wasn’t until he was assigned to the USS
Shad
(SS 235) and became a full lieutenant that Johnson began to distinguish himself. His characteristic aggressiveness helped. Good grades don’t necessarily make for a good sub captain. Many COs excelled academically, only to be dismissed during the war for excessive caution. Johnson understood excessiveness, but caution usually failed him. After the
Shad
’s sixth war patrol, he was awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry in “render[ing] invaluable assistance to his CO in conducting aggressive torpedo attacks.”
¹⁰
It was just the kind of thing he excelled at.

During this period, Johnson married an admiral’s daughter, which certainly didn’t hurt his career any. After serving aboard the
Shad
, he returned to sub school to qualify for command and was eventually named executive officer of the USS
Tunny
(SS 282).

Johnson spent seven months aboard the
Tunny
, during which time his aggressiveness paid off. Earning a Gold Star (in lieu of a second Silver Star), Johnson was cited for his “coolness and high devotion to duty” as well as his “excellent judgment and thorough knowledge of attack problems.”
¹¹
After his stay aboard the
Tunny
, Johnson finally received orders for his own sub command. In June 1945 he replaced Fulp as captain of the
Segundo
.

Despite seven war patrols under his belt, Steve Johnson could still lose his temper. A future crew member nicknamed him “Screaming” Steve Johnson for his profane outbursts.
¹²
The
Segundo
’s crew had yet to experience a Johnson tirade. He might have captained two old-fashioned S-boats and been XO of the
Tunny
, but the
Segundo
marked the first time he’d ever captained a frontline submarine.
Perhaps it was Johnson’s enthusiasm for commanding his first combat sub that made him so gung-ho, or perhaps it was his gunslinger disposition. Whatever the reason, it made his crew nervous as they prepared to depart on the
Segundo
’s fifth war patrol.

It would also be their last.

C
ANCELING THE
P
ANAMA
C
ANAL MISSION MADE SENSE UNDER
the circumstances. If the special attack force left immediately, it would take until the end of August before it was in position to bomb the canal. By that time, Japan feared, the U.S. invasion could be well under way, rendering a canal attack moot. Additionally, the Allies were sending European theater ships into the Pacific, either by circumnavigating Africa or by transiting the Suez Canal. Destroying the Panama Canal would do nothing to stop these ships from reaching the Pacific; nor would it impede the considerable number already there.

The anchorage at Ulithi had been an important staging area for the U.S. invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
¹
Presumably it would remain so for the invasion of Japan. It could easily handle 1,000 ships, more than Pearl Harbor, and additional ships were on the way. Given the declining war situation, it made sense for Japan to destroy as many of these ships as possible rather than close the route for those coming later.

Additionally, an immense amount of fuel would be required for four underwater aircraft carriers to make the round trip to Panama. The Naval General Staff knew there wasn’t enough left in Japan to support such a mission. However, if Ariizumi’s special attack force was redirected against Ulithi, they might slow down, if not prevent, an impending invasion.
²

Bombing raids had recently burned the navy ministry to the ground.
³
Nagoya had taken another pounding, further disrupting
Seiran
production, and even Nanao had been hit. By June, U.S. incendiary raids had become such milk runs that ComSubPac had
forbidden submariners from hitching rides on B-29s to view the destruction.
⁴
When Allied raids struck Kure on June 22, two more Sixth Fleet subs were lost.
⁵
Although accuracy had improved between January and June 1945, it still didn’t qualify as “precision bombing,” and many Japanese cities suffered the same fate as Dresden.
⁶

While Ariizumi met with the Naval General Staff, he ordered his assistant to collect all the materials he could find on Ulithi.
⁷
The fires inside the Naval Ministry had grown so intense, the safes inside had melted. As a result, the most important documents, including maps, navigation charts, and files, had been hidden in a nearby bomb shelter for protection. But the surviving papers had been moved in such a hurry, they were in complete disarray. When Ariizumi’s assistant searched for documents related to Ulithi, he found nothing and returned to Nanao empty-handed.
⁸