The Fujita Plan: Japanese Attacks on the United States and Australia During the Second World War

by Mark Felton

  The next day, while still in the same area, lookouts positioned on the I-25’s conning tower gave a cry of alarm. They had spotted a lone plane bearing down on their submarine from the land. 4th Air Force had scrambled several aircraft to investigate the reports received of an unidentified plane in the vicinity of Mount Emily and Brookings, and by sheer luck a Lockheed A-29 Hudson bomber of the 42nd Bomb Group flying out of McChord Field found the I-25 sitting on the surface off the Oregon coast. As the American aircraft dived in to attack Tagami ordered an immediate crash-dive. The A-29 released three 300-pound depth charges over the submerged submarine, by which time the I-25 was at a depth of 230 feet. The first depth charge exploded at eighty feet, and the other two at 100. The I-25 was violently shaken by the detonations, and Tagami took his boat down to the seabed west of Port Orford.4 The I-25 had sustained some minor damage, including a damaged antenna lead and the radio room had sprung a leak, but otherwise his boat and crew were unharmed and the mission would continue. The Hudson bomber dropped seven more depth charges to no effect. Four thermite incendiaries remained aboard the I-25 awaiting delivery to the United States by Fujita and Okuda.

  Forestry workers Gardner and Johnson camped overnight at the site of their discovery of bomb damage in the forest, and the next day, 10 September, two other wardens, who had been sent to assist them, arrived at the scene. Between them the four men collected sixty-five pounds of man-made material from the site and this evidence was immediately rushed to waiting army intelligence personnel at Brookings for analysis. An FBI agent arrived at Brookings to assist the army, and it was not very long before metal fragments from the bomb’s case revealed the weapon’s Japanese origin. With the verbal reports of various fire wardens and air defence observers of an unidentified aircraft over the national forest on 9 September, and the Hudson’s attack on a Japanese submarine the day after, the ‘Fujita Plan’ revealed itself to the American authorities. The worry for the army and the FBI was when and where would the Japanese strike again? They also swiftly realized the lucky escape Oregon had had, as neither bomb had caused large fires. When the I-25 had been waiting out the bad weather submerged off the Port Orford Heads for several days in early September, rain and fog had repeatedly soaked the forests, and the dampness that remained when Fujita attacked on 9 September prevented either of the fires he had started from taking hold among the trees. The Americans would probably not have nature on their side again if the Japanese mounted similar attacks in the near future.

  The United States government attempted to withhold news of the daring Japanese raid from the American people, anxious to prevent a panic and to reassure them that the west coast was adequately defended. However, the authorities almost immediately lost control of the story. This was because dozens of service and civilian personnel had been involved in the events of 9–10 September, and many had talked openly about them to one another and their families. It was not long before the newspapers had the story, fuelling calls for increased defences along the west coast to prevent this kind of thing from occurring again. In the same way that the May 1942 midget submarine attacks on Sydney Harbour had unsettled the Australian people, fuelling widely held, though ultimately false, invasion fears and a feeling of vulnerability, so Fujita’s attack caused considerable disquiet throughout the western United States. The American authorities took some steps towards allaying public anxiety. Firstly, a stricter blackout was enforced along the west coast in the hope of denying the Japanese navigational points when launching their ‘sneak’ attacks, although someone decided not to include lighthouses as part of the blackout because of their vital importance to coastal shipping and the fishing fleets. This would prove to be a mistake, as Fujita was able to utilize a lighthouse once again during his second air raid on Oregon. The FBI went so far as to conduct detailed searches of some of the quiet north-western lakes, harbouring suspicions that the Japanese could have been basing floatplane bombers in them. Naturally, these searches turned up nothing of Japanese origin. The state of Washington was sent four further fighter aircraft to stiffen its coastal defences, though these planes were later removed when no further Japanese attacks occurred after the end of September 1942.

  Aboard the I-25 enthusiasm still dominated the submarine’s atmosphere. Fujita was satisfied that the 9 September raid had been successful, although he had no way of knowing the extent of the blazes started by his incendiary bombs in the forests around Mount Emily. He and Petty Officer Okuda, his observer, were satisfied that some damage had been inflicted on the United States as both men had seen the thermite incendiary bombs explode on the forest floor, and had observed flames on the ground among the trees before they had flown away from the scene.

  There remained stored aboard the I-25 four more 76-kg incendiary bombs, sufficient ordnance for two further air raids on the United States. Lieutenant-Commander Tagami, skipper of the I-25, was happy to allow Fujita to launch a second raid, suggesting helpfully that, ‘We’ll make the next one a night attack, Fujita, for the Americans will be expecting another sunrise one.’ Shortly after midnight on 29 September the I-25 quietly surfaced about fifty miles west of the Cape Blanco lighthouse on the coast of Oregon. Once again, the familiar routine of assembling and arming the Yokosuka floatplane was conducted, until permission was received to launch the aircraft on its mission. Tagami ordered his executive officer, Lieutenant Tatsuo Tsukudo, to turn the submarine’s bows into the wind, and then the catapult was fired and Fujita and Okuda hurtled along the deck and rose gracefully into the night sky. The crewmen on deck stood silently, listening as the little aircraft droned away into the darkness.

  The exclusion of lighthouses from the west coast blackout meant that Fujita was able to fly due east, using the Cape Blanco light to make landfall, and then he simply flew inland on the same heading for a further thirty minutes before releasing both of his bombs over the forests. At 5.22 a.m. a work gang of forestry personnel reported to their Gold Beach headquarters by radio that they had heard an unidentified aircraft pass overhead. At that time the men were about seven miles east of Port Orford at a ranger station called Grassy Knob. It was immediately suspected that a Japanese aircraft had penetrated United States airspace again, and Ranger Headquarters instructed the men to conduct a ground search for forest fires as soon as it was light. Several fire-prevention patrols struck out into the forest at sunup, but no one found anything suspicious. Fujita later stated that he had seen once again the brilliant white flash of a detonating incendiary bomb on both occasions that night when he had released them, but any blazes that did occur were small and burned themselves out before being seen by the fire watchers. Indeed, no fragments or incendiary pellets have ever been found from the Japanese bombs dropped on 29 September, and their remains are to this day somewhere on the forest floor, lost to time.

  After releasing his bombs Fujita did not remain in the area but immediately turned his aircraft around and retraced his course to the coast, flying low past the Cape Blanco lighthouse and disappearing out to sea. Fujita visually relocated the I-25 by following an oil slick that the submarine was trailing (possibly from damage caused by the Hudson maritime bomber’s attack of 10 September). His plane was hastily hoisted aboard and disassembled, and then the I-25 submerged. Fujita began immediate planning for a final sortie, as two thermite incendiary bombs still remained aboard the submarine. Once again, in a replay of the events that had delayed Fujita’s first raid over the United States, rough weather and a thick sea mist closed in on the area preventing any launch of the floatplane. For several days the I-25 hung around the area, both Tagami and Fujita hoping that the weather would clear sufficiently to allow the third and last sortie of the mission to be launched. However, the weather stubbornly refused to improve, and eventually Tagami decided to abandon any further efforts to launch Fujita and Okuda on a third air raid, and to concentrate instead on interdicting coastal shipping using the submarine. It was a frustrating end to Fujita’s mission, a mission dogged by bad weather that had
worked well to protect the forests of the Pacific Northwest from harm on two occasions.

  On 4 October 1942 the I-25 was sitting on the surface off the south Oregon coast charging her batteries. Commander Tagami had finally cancelled further floatplane sorties over the mainland of the United States for good owing to the deteriorating weather conditions at sea, which would have endangered both aircraft and crew in the launch and recovery of the E14Y1. However, Tagami was not intent on returning to Japan just yet, for as well as the two unused 76kg thermite incendiary bombs in storage, he still had six torpedoes aboard the I-25, and the determination to see them expended to maximum effect.

  All remained quiet aboard the submarine, as she rolled in the heavy swell, her lookouts pensively scanning the horizon and the sky for both threats and opportunities. Their patience was rewarded when an opportunity presented itself in the form of the 6,653-ton American tanker Camden. Tagami immediately ordered ‘General Quarters! Action stations!’ and the boat moved to line up for a shot at the zigzagging tanker. Two Long Lance torpedoes shot from the I-25’s bow tubes, but the Camden successfully managed to evade both of them, and then made off at full speed in an attempt to outrun the submarine. The I-25 gave a dogged pursuit, trailing the Camden for four hours until, off Coos Bay Tagami was able to move into another good firing position. A further torpedo hammered its way through the sea, impacting the Camden in the bows, which were rapidly enveloped by flames and dense smoke. The tanker shuddered and began to lose speed. Tagami was satisfied that the Camden was as good as lost, and he did not linger to witness the vessel’s death throes.

  The fire started by the Japanese torpedo strike began to spread through the Camden, and the captain ordered his crew off the stricken vessel in the lifeboats. The following day, the abandoned Camden was discovered to be still afloat, and the fire that had appeared to signal the end of the vessel had burned itself out. There was some hope that the vessel could be saved, and the tug Kenai arrived to take the damaged tanker in tow. Hopes of salvaging her faded on 10 October when fire, which had burned down but had not completely extinguished, once again broke out and the tug slipped the towlines as the Camden succumbed to her mortal wound. The tanker finally went down in the mouth of the Columbia River.

  In the meantime, the I-25 had changed position to an area off Cape Sebastian, and Tagami kept his submarine sitting boldly on the surface as he searched out a new target. Three torpedoes were loaded and ready to fire, and all that was required was a little luck in finding a vessel to expend some on. Ironically, on 6 October, lookouts located the 7,038-ton tanker Larry Doheny, the same vessel Lieutenant-Commander Kozo Nishino had attacked but failed to destroy in his submarine the I-17 on 23 December 1941. On this occasion Tagami would succeed where Nishino had failed, although the captain of the Larry Doheny attempted a fight back to save his vessel. The I-25 stalked the Larry Doheny for ten minutes, carefully manoeuvring for a shot, Tagami aware that he only had the three torpedoes remaining aboard. After the firing position was achieved to his satisfaction Tagami ordered a single torpedo launched, and it appeared a foregone conclusion that the Larry Doheny would be struck. However, the wily skipper of the tanker abruptly altered course, deftly avoiding the running torpedo, and pointing his bows directly at the Japanese submarine, he ploughed at full speed towards a shocked collection of Japanese officers standing on the conning tower, determined to ram and sink the I-25 with the great mass of his ship. Ramming was virtually the only offensive option open to a merchant captain when confronted with an enemy submarine, and on several occasions during the Second World War German and Japanese submarines were destroyed or severely damaged in this manner, although normally the vessel performing the ramming was a warship. Tagami now ordered another torpedo fired from practically point blank range. The torpedo closed the gap between the I-25 and the charging tanker in only eighteen seconds, striking and detonating inside the Larry Doheny. Lookouts and officers on the submarine’s conning tower dived for cover as smouldering shards of tanker and torpedo showered down all around them. The Larry Doheny heeled over and began immediately to sink by the head, Tagami allowing most of his crewmen the opportunity to view the ship’s foundering through the submarine’s periscope. After a few minutes the I-25 departed the area at full speed on the surface, Tagami and his crew jubilant with their two successes over two days.5

  Commander Tagami’s sinking of the Camden and the Larry Doheny were the final successful submarine attacks made against shipping off the United States west coast during the Second World War. However, it was not the last act in the story of the I-25’s mission to America. On 10 October, and with just one torpedo remaining aboard, Tagami set a course for Japan and began the journey home for a refit and rest. On his way home he was almost responsible for a diplomatic incident between Japan and the Soviet Union. On the 11th the I-25’s lookouts reported, in heavy weather, what appeared to them to be two battleships moving in the direction of San Francisco. As the big Japanese submarine powered through the waves Tagami and his officers strained to make out exactly what kind of enemy vessels they had encountered, and were eventually rewarded by the sight of two submarines motoring in company on the surface. Tagami immediately, and logically, identified them as American submarines, and prepared to attack. On this occasion he decided upon a submerged attack, and with a rush of compressed air the last torpedo hammered away through the water towards one of the medium-sized, grey-painted submarines he could clearly see through his attack periscope. Thirty tense seconds passed, as Lieutenant Tsukudo’s stopwatch recorded the torpedoes run through the water, when suddenly deep, powerful explosions reverberated through the I-25’s pressure hull indicating that the torpedo had found its mark. After noting another successful kill in his log, Tagami turned the I-25 for home, arriving at Yokosuka on 24 October. Tagami had definitely sunk a submarine, but not an American vessel. His victim was the L-16, a 1,039-ton minelaying submarine belonging to the Red Navy. Skippered by Commander Dmitri Gussarov, the L-16 was travelling in company with the L-15, both boats heading for San Francisco. They had departed from Petropavlovsk in Siberia and called in at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands before attempting to complete the final leg of their journey to California. The L-15 attempted to attack the submerged I-25 after spotting the Japanese submarine’s periscopes above the surface of the water. The Soviet submarine managed to fire five rounds from her 45mm deck-gun at the periscopes, but they all landed harmlessly in the ocean around the I-25 before the Japanese submarine made off and resumed her course for home.

  Japan and the Soviet Union had maintained an uneasy peace along the Manchuria-Siberia border since the Soviets had checked Japanese moves to extend their conquests into Mongolia and Siberia at the Battle of Halkin Gol between May and September 1939. The Japanese had subsequently turned their expansionist attentions to dominating the Pacific and south-east Asia, as well as maintaining their hold over huge swathes of China. Although the Japanese had negotiated a non-aggression pact with Stalin in 1941, neither side trusted the other, and Japan stationed thousands of troops on the border as a deterrent to Soviet expansion. Having so many troops tied up so effectively and doing nothing was to seriously hamper Japan’s ability to prosecute the war elsewhere. By 1942, and the I-25’s sinking of a Soviet submarine, the Japanese were fighting the United States in the Pacific, Britain, her empire and dominions in Burma, and also garrisoning vast areas of China. If Japan had been held responsible for the loss of a Soviet submarine and fifty sailors lives Stalin could have torn up the 1941 Pact and attempted to have snatched the resources of Manchuria for his own war machine. On this occasion the I-25 was not identified, so no one was held responsible and the Pact remained in force. Only in the dying days of the Second World War in 1945 did Stalin unleash his forces upon the understrength Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria and Korea, achieving an extensive breakthrough ten days before Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

  In 1962, Nobuo Fujita, by now a metals salesman in Jap
an, received a surprise invitation from a local community group in the United States called the Brookings Jaycees. Twenty years had passed since Fujita had piloted the tiny Yokosuka floatplane close to the town of Brookings in his attempt to set Oregon alight, and he was surprised to be asked to visit the town he had tried so hard to destroy. Fujita was also not a little suspicious as to why the Americans would invite their former enemy to visit the site of his darkest hour. When the Japanese government was informed of the invitation to Fujita from Brookings, officials wrote to the town fathers wanting a reassurance that Fujita was not being lured to the United States to be tried as a war criminal!

  It is clear from Fujita’s later actions that his attempt to set the vast redwood forests of Oregon on fire in 1942, and to destroy dozens of towns and settlements, had weighed heavily on his conscience in the intervening two decades. He was determined to accept the invitation from the Jaycees, and to make an attempt at reconciliation with the Americans. Of course, not every inhabitant of Brookings was keen to see Fujita in the flesh, but Fujita tried hard to win everyone over. One of his first acts on arrival in the town was to present the mayor with a 400-year old samurai sword, a valuable family heirloom and the same sword that he had carried in the cockpit of his Yokosuka floatplane both times he had bombed Oregon. Fujita donated the weapon as a symbol of his heartfelt wish to atone for his wartime actions. The ‘Fujita Sword’, as it has become known, now resides on display inside the Chetco Public Library in Brookings, as a reminder of both Fujita’s apology and of the bond which subsequently grew up between the wartime Japanese pilot and the citizens of a small Oregon town.

  Fujita was a regular visitor to Brookings over the next thirty-five years, even bringing his granddaughter with him on occasions. He was responsible for creating a fund at the local library to educate the children of Brookings about other cultures, and he visited the site of one of his incendiary bomb strikes and planted a redwood sapling to atone for his actions. Fujita’s willingness and apparent personal need to assist the community of Brookings extended to sponsoring local high school students’ exchange programmes to Japan, as well as offering each student an all expenses paid tour of his country, the money for this coming each time out of his own pocket. Fujita eventually came to be held in such high esteem by Brookings that shortly before his death from lung cancer at the age of eighty-six in 1997 a representative from the town travelled to Japan to present him with a certificate confirming him as an ‘Honorary Citizen’ of Brookings. It was a fitting end to an extraordinary journey undertaken by Fujita when he first stood in the conference room in Tokyo in 1942, proud of his idea and so keen to make his plan a reality.