Hopes fading, but search continues

Lee Cataluna: Tragedies a challenge to Island spirit

Hope is dimming that any of the nine people missing from the sunken Ehime Maru will be found alive, but it is politically vital that the United States make every effort to search as long as a chance remains.

"It is particularly important to U.S.-Japan relations that this be handled right, but one would hope that an equivalent effort would be put in regardless of the nationality of the vessel involved or the crew involved," said Richard Baker, a career U.S. diplomat in Asia and now an adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Continuing the search as long as there’s hope "is the humane and sensitive thing to do, and I believe it is a good day to see our military putting in that kind of effort immediately and in a sustained way," Baker said. "Had they called off the search after 24 hours, what would we all be saying? I think it is important for the American government and the U.S. military to demonstrate that the event really mattered and that they are taking it very seriously and personally."

And history suggests that survival is indeed possible, though unlikely, if the nine did not go to the bottom with the ship.

More than 300 U.S. sailors were plucked from the Pacific five days after a Japanese submarine torpedoed their cruiser, the USS Indianapolis, shortly before the end of World War II. Survivors said more than 800 of the ship’s 1,196 crewmen were still alive after the sinking, but that hypothermia, thirst and broiling tropical sun had quickly taken a toll. The disaster, in 1945, was the worst in U.S. naval history.

And in 1987, a 4-year-old boy was found clinging to a piece of lumber two days after the ferry Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker in the Philippines, leaving 4,387 dead in the world’s worst peacetime shipping disaster.

Yesterday, the third day after the submarine USS Greeneville sank the Ehime Maru, rescue officials said the search for survivors would continue until at least this morning.

"We’re going to keep searching until we are convinced there is no chance for survival," Coast Guard Petty Officer Eric Hedaa said. "We’ll be consulting with physicians and determining at some point that there is no possibility that these people are still alive."

Coast Guard Rear Adm. James McClelland Jr. will make the final decision, Hedaa said.

Warm Pacific waters helped ward off hypothermia when the Indianapolis went down halfway between Guam and the Philippines. The Titanic, by contrast, sank in the frigid North Atlantic when it struck an iceberg in 1912, and only passengers who had managed to scramble into lifeboats survived the night.

More than 7,500 people died in the world’s worst wartime sinking, when a Russian submarine torpedoed the German passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff in the chilly Baltic Sea in 1945. More than 1,200 in lifeboats survived, the last pulled aboard a rescue vessel just seven hours after the ship went down.

"Right off the bat, if you’re in the North Atlantic in 45-degree water, you’ve got 15 minutes to live," Hedaa said. "Here, you’ve got substantially longer, but as time goes on, hypothermia’s going to be more and more of a factor. Dehydration is also an issue, and these are the types of factors that will be taken into account when considering calling off the search."

A total of four Coast Guard and Navy ships and three aircraft were searching for survivors yesterday, he said.

The water at Friday’s accident scene 10 miles south of Diamond Head has remained between 77 and 78 degrees, Hedaa said.

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