by Peter Sasgen
A lot had happened since the first briefing Nimitz had received in February. The U.S. Third Fleet had about completed its destruction of the Imperial Japanese Navy; LeMay’s B-29s had reduced vast areas of Japan’s major cities to ashes; Japan, seeking a possible end to the war on terms less onerous than unconditional surrender, had sent nascent peace feelers to the Allies through its ambassador to the Soviets; and, while planning continued for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, Washington prepared for a possible Japanese surrender by assembling staffs of experts in the fields of civil affairs, reconstruction, and, most important, war crimes. The issue of Japan’s extending peace feelers seemed to indicate that the empire had reached the end of the road. Still, just as before, no one thought the final collapse would come without a bloody fight on the Tokyo Plain.
Parsons screened a color motion picture of the successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamogordo on July 16. To a man the officers found it a sobering, if not frightening spectacle. It didn’t take much imagination to picture what such a weapon would do to a city and its population, and it changed some minds regarding its usefulness as a weapon to force Japan to capitulate. One of those minds may have been Nimitz’s. He’d once told King that he believed America’s objectives in the Pacific would more likely be realized by continuing to blockade Japan and destroying her military forces than by relying on a secret weapon. But it was clear to him now that the sheer visual effects produced by the bomb, to say nothing of its destructive power, would shock and demoralize the Japanese people and sap their resolve to fight on.
The officers also learned from Parsons that the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was on her way to deliver the subcritical core of U-235 to the scientists on Tinian assembling the atomic bomb, which, if President Truman gave the order, would be dropped by B-29 on Japan. Washington hoped that with the announcement of the Potsdam Declaration, setting forth the terms for Japan’s surrender, Tokyo would agree to end the war. But the refusal of Japan’s leaders to face reality had deflated those hopes.
Nimitz, frustrated over Japan’s intransigence, believed that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, it was just a matter of time before they caved in. But how much time and how many more lives it would take were questions neither Nimitz nor anyone else could answer. And until the Japanese did cave in, Spruance would continue launching air attacks, LeMay would keep dropping incendiaries, and Lockwood would keep on sending subs into the Sea of Japan to mop up marus.
Within ComSubPac operations at Guam, as in every other command, there was a growing belief that the end was near. Aboard the last wave of seven FMS subs already headed for the Sea of Japan the sense of urgency was palpable; the submariners wanted to get in their last licks before the war ended.
Edward L. Beach, skipper of one of those boats, the USS Piper (SS-409), felt there was a good possibility he’d be too late.2 “One decision I made,” wrote Beach, “and clung to tenaciously: we were going to get Piper into action or break our necks trying.” Beach described this overwhelming need for action when he wrote, “[We] raced for the war zone. Somehow I felt it was slipping away from us—receding faster than we approached it.... I felt an overwhelming impatience to be back in it before it ended.” And, Beach added, now that the Japanese were near defeat, he wanted to destroy what was left of them just as they had destroyed the Wahoo and so many other subs.
As Beach and the Piper raced for the Sea of Japan, the war itself raced to its conclusion. On August 6 an atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima. On August 9 another atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki.
While a world stunned by the use of this frightening new weapon waited for news of Japan’s capitulation, Admiral Lockwood officially announced the loss of the Bonefish. Thus, a notice appearing in the August 12 edition of the Atlanta Journal announced the end of one life and the beginning of another.
SON BORN DAY SKIPPER OF SUB ANNOUNCED LOST
The Navy Department Saturday announced in Washington the loss of the submarine Bonefish on the same day [August 11] that a son was born in Atlanta to the wife of the vessel’s skipper, Commander Lawrence L. Edge.
Mrs. Edge was notified two weeks ago that her husband . . . is missing in action. The Navy Department said the Bonefish is “overdue from patrol and presumed lost.”
The boy has been named Lawrence Lott Edge, Jr.3
By coincidence an article about American POWs appeared in the same edition of that newspaper. The POW story surely must have strengthened Sarah’s resolve to believe that Lawrence was alive and in enemy hands. “Jap Surrender to Free 16,700 U.S. Prisoners,”4 headlined the article reporting that American POWs were incarcerated in prisons across Japan and in occupied territories. The numbers were incomplete because it had been impossible for the Red Cross and other neutrals to visit the camps during the war to assess the situation. It was known from official records, the article added, that there were over two thousand naval personnel alone being held. For Sarah and the families of the Bonefish crew, it meant that there was indeed a good chance that Lawrence and his men might be among them.
Following Lockwood’s announcement about the Bonefish, the Navy lifted its embargo on news about Operation Barney. Within hours of its lifting the Los Angeles Times published a long article entitled “Sub Flotilla Returns After Taking Nip Toll.” Written by Kyle Palmer, LA Times war correspondent, the story provided a reasonably accurate account of Operation Barney, its objectives, and its results, including the number of enemy ships sunk and damaged. In his article Palmer went on to say, “Not a man nor a ship of the striking force was lost in the operation—one of the most daring and spectacularly successful of the Pacific war.”5 Palmer and the other reporters who had attended the Hellcats news conference in Pearl Harbor were apparently still unaware at the time of release and publication of the story that the Bonefish had been lost during the raid.
Sarah Edge and the families of the missing Bonefish crew still didn’t know that the Bonefish had been lost in Operation Barney. Sarah learned that her husband had been in the Sea of Japan only when she received a letter from Lockwood fulfilling his pledge to write her. The letter, which arrived while Sarah was still in the hospital after the birth of her son, provided information about Operation Barney and, based on sketchy details then available to ComSubPac, Lockwood’s explanation of how Lawrence and his crew had likely perished. Meant to bolster Sarah’s spirits, the letter only raised more questions, and, later, invited controversy and criticism by Bonefish families regarding Lockwood’s judgment in the matter.
12 August, 1945
My dear Mrs. Edge [Lockwood wrote]:
In the midst of national rejoicing at the probable end of the war, it is particularly painful that you should be informed that your husband, Commander Lawrence L. Edge, U.S. Navy, is missing.
Undoubtedly the Navy Department has already informed you, since today’s papers contain the news that the Bonefish has been declared missing and must be presumed lost.
I cannot give you entire details for reasons of security, but as you may know, Larry, as we all called him, had special gear in his ship, the Bonefish, which made it possible for him to join in a raid into the Japan Sea. They got in without a hitch about 5 June and Larry was talked to by Commander George Pierce, Captain of the Tunny, on 18 June. The Bonefish reported that she had sunk two ships and was proceeding in to Toyama Wan, a bay on the west coast of Honshu.
That is the last time that Larry’s ship was seen, and although after exit on the day set for the raiding submariners to depart that area, Pierce stayed just outside for two days trying to contact the Bonefish by radio; no message has ever been received from her. I also sent her two messages advising her of the best means of making exit, but these were never answered.
What happened to her we do not know, but so far we have no information that the enemy has publicly claimed the sinking or capture.
I earnestly pray that Larry did survive her loss, but knowing how few submarine personnel have been reported
as prisoners, I cannot conscientiously encourage you to believe he did.... Please accept my deepest sympathy in your sorrow, and know that we all pray that Larry may have survived the loss of his ship.
Sincerely
C. A. Lockwood, Jr. [signed]6
Shortly after receiving Lockwood’s letter, Sarah received one from Lawrence’s division commander, Captain Lucius Chappel. After concurring with Lockwood’s description of the raid, Chappel sounded a hopeful note.
I beg you not to utterly despair. In the waters in which the Bonefish was operating it is [quite] possible that some of the ship’s company survived. Many submarine people have turned up, months or years after they were declared missing, in prisoner of war camps. My old ship is an example [USS Sculpin (SS-1 91)]; lost early in 1944, yet it was not until this spring that we learned that a good part of the crew was safe and well.7
Confined to a maternity ward after the birth of Lawrence Jr., Sarah felt helpless. There was so much that she didn’t know and wasn’t being told. Lacking official information and ignorant of the facts surrounding Operation Barney except for what she’d learned from Lockwood and Chappel and from what had been published in the paper, she was desperate to know what had happened to the Bonefish. Adding to her confusion were a host of unanswered questions. For example, given that the war was almost over, why had it been necessary for the Bonefish and the other submarines to penetrate the Sea of Japan? What, if anything, aside from proving how audacious and daring submariners were, had it accomplished? Was the mission supposed to have ended the war? If so, it had failed; it was almost mid-August and the Japanese still hadn’t surrendered even after being hit by two atomic bombs. How, then, could a small task force of submarines possibly bring about the end the war? Most important of all, was there a real possibility that there may have been survivors from the Bonefish who were being held in Japanese POW camps? Chappel seemed to think there might be, while Lockwood seemed to hold out little hope for their survival. Given all the uncertainties, Sarah pledged that she’d never abandon hope for Lawrence and his men until there was incontrovertible evidence that they were dead, not until every last Japanese POW camp was liberated and every man in them identified. Lucius Chappel had begged her not to despair, said that it was possible that they had survived. Sarah desperately wanted to believe that that was true.
Admiral Nimitz had been counting the days since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he received a coded message from Admiral King. The message began, “This is a peace warning.”8 King’s message stated that though it was not yet official, the Japanese had informed the United States government through the Swiss that they were willing to accept the terms of surrender contained in the Potsdam Declaration. While Washington waited for an official announcement from Tokyo, the Navy continued to launch air attacks across Honshu. On Tinian, Curtis LeMay’s B-29s stoked up on incendiaries to drop on Japanese cities.
On August fifteenth, at CinCPac headquarters on Guam (the fourteenth in Washington), a restricted-use eyes-only Teletype began spewing out a message in plain English, not code. Nimitz’s intel officer tore the top sheet from the machine, read Admiral King’s message, then dashed for his boss’s office.
Nimitz looked up, surprised. “It’s over,” blurted the excited intel officer. Nimitz read the message, which included the full text of Japan’s acceptance of surrender transmitted via the Swiss legation in Tokyo to Washington. Nimitz didn’t get excited; he just gave the officer a smile of satisfaction. He’d known all along that the Japanese were finished, and now at last it was over. Nimitz wasted no time broadcasting an immediate cease-fire order to the fleet, which he followed with a personal message to sailors across the Pacific on the ending of the war. Lockwood broadcast a message of his own to the submarine force. It read in part:
The long-awaited day has come and cease fire has been sounded. As Force Commander I desire to congratulate each and every officer and man of the Submarine Force upon a job superbly well done. My admiration for your daring, skill, initiative, determination and loyalty cannot be adequately expressed.... You have deserved the lasting peace which we all hope has been won for future generations.... May God rest the gallant souls of those missing presumed lost.
The end of the war brought a push for demobilization and, with it, cries to get the troops home by Christmas. Lockwood was caught up in a whirl-wind of meetings and conferences designed to do just that, piled on top of the Everest of paperwork generated by the cessation of hostilities. He hardly had time to reflect on what his sub force had accomplished and at what cost. He was thankful the war was over—thankful, too, that he’d not have to send any more young men on patrols they might not survive. There were, given the small size of the force, far too many who did not return.
As for Operation Barney, Lockwood believed it pointed the way to the future of the submarine force through operations that would capitalize on ever more sophisticated submarines and weapons. Not everyone shared Lockwood’s view. Critics within the sub force observed that despite the bravery and dedication of the submariners, the results of the recent forays into the Sea of Japan hardly seemed worth the risk, especially in regard to the loss of the Bonefish, whose fate was yet to be determined. Critics outside the sub force believed that Barney had been a stunt, a make-work patrol, designed by Lockwood to keep his sub force occupied as the war wound down. They pointed out that no matter how many ships the Hellcats sank in the Sea of Japan (the seven submarines that followed the Hellcats into the sea in August 1945 sank only two ships), it had had no measurable effect on the weakening of Japan’s ability to prolong the war. And though the sub force had almost single-handedly destroyed Japan’s merchant marine and a good portion of her navy, the force nevertheless stood to be eclipsed by Army and Navy air power. In the end the atomic bomb proved to be the decisive weapon that ended the war in the Pacific, not sea power. By comparison Operation Barney was just a relatively minor affair. Lockwood, always an optimist, shrugged off the criticism as he heaped deserved praise on his submariners and looked to the future.
For the moment, however, the future of the silent service looked bleak. Occupied with the logistics of winding down the robust wartime sub force, Lockwood saw a shrinking fleet of mostly battle-weary subs and submariners. He knew America would need a new and modern fleet of long-range, high-endurance submarines and that such a fleet would require a complete rethinking of what a submarine should be.
While grappling with these issues, Lockwood flew with Admiral Nimitz and a group of other officers to Tokyo Bay, where they participated in the surrender ceremony held aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) on September 2, 1945. After the ceremony Lockwood took the opportunity to tour several captured Japanese submarines capable of launching aircraft from waterproof hangars on their decks. Among them was the I-400, at that time one of the biggest submarines ever built.
Lockwood was shocked when he saw these submarines. Their sheer size alone staggered the imagination. The Japanese boats were far more advanced than Lockwood could have envisioned. The design of their diesels incorporated up-to-date technologies; their radar and sonar systems were on a par with those of the U.S. Navy. He also got a close look at the fabled Japanese “Long Lance” torpedo, which vastly outperformed by a whopping margin any torpedoes the U.S. Navy had in its inventory. Though Lockwood was dismissive of the big subs for their lack of refinement and creature comforts in comparison to U.S. subs, clearly their great size pointed to possibilities for the future of submarine development.
Lockwood’s return to Guam coincided with the arrival of some of the first American POWs from camps liberated in Japan. Many of the survivors (only a few submariners were among the returnees, none from the Bonefish) were in terrible condition, suffering from dysentery, jaundice, malnutrition, and physical abuse. Far too many showed evidence of the brutality and the inhuman conditions they had suffered in captivity. Many of the returnees had to be hospitalized; those in better condition, and able to withstand it, were debriefed by
naval intelligence to gather information for use in the upcoming war crimes trials.
It was a pitiful, embittering sight, Lockwood said, to see those men, their skeletal, hard-planed, sunken-eyed faces haunted by what they’d experienced. He was horrified to learn what the Japanese had done to them and to learn that the Japanese had murdered and maimed prisoners as they saw fit. How many submariners had survived the sinking of their ships only to succumb to torture and disease would not be known for months. Meanwhile, Lockwood’s staff kept a tally of submariners returning from POW camps, hoping to get information from them about the fate of missing shipmates. Among the first returnees to Guam, not one of them had seen or heard of any survivors from the Bonefish.
Home again and with a new baby to care for along with Boo, Sarah began to assemble all the information she could find about the loss of the Bonefish . What she had so far were just the basic facts provided by Lockwood concerning a raid by submarines in the Sea of Japan. They included a couple of names, a date, and a bay in Honshu called Toyama Wan. This wasn’t enough. She had to know more. Somehow she had to get every piece of information available. If she could, it might explain what had happened to the Bonefish and help her cope with the fact that Lawrence was missing in action, perhaps dead. The Bonefish families, coping with their own losses, were no better off. They knew almost nothing regarding the fate of their loved ones beyond what they’d been told by the Navy, which wasn’t much. In distress they turned to Sarah for help.ac
