By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
One by one, weary Japanese crewmen who survived the submarine accident that sank their fishing vessel pleaded yesterday for nine of their missing to be found.
Fourteen shaken men, most wearing donated shorts and navy blue T-shirts, filed in behind a haggard high school principal to a room full of media. Here they would explain, for the first time in public, how they and 12 others escaped the sinking ship.
They recounted last week’s wreck of the Ehime Maru the way someone describes a hazy dream after fitful sleep.
One thought whales might have run into the ship.
A few recalled loud noises and rushing up to the bridge, the highest point of the four-deck trawler, only to have water reach their knees, then their waists, then their necks.
Others just remembered the waves.
What they found most jarring was to learn that two civilian guests of the Navy were at the controls of the USS Greeneville at the time the submarine surfaced and rammed the Ehime Maru.
"Civilian steers?" first mate Ryoichi Miya asked incredulously when he heard about it at yesterday’s press conference, held at Honolulu’s Japanese Cultural Center.
"As a seaman, I don’t forgive it," he said, his voice growing angry. "A civilian, probably not enough knowledge, shouldn’t steer a boat for practicing or training. This is disappointing."
Four students, two teachers and three crewman are still missing since Friday’s sinking of the training vessel from Uwajima Fisheries High School in southwestern Japan.
The crewmen who spoke yesterday were among the 26 people rescued at sea nearly an hour after their ship went down in 1,800-foot waters nine miles south of Diamond Head.
The men, ranging from those barely out of high school to graying veterans who had spent their careers at sea, said they were grateful to be alive.
First mate Miya was glad he picked up more than one life vest, but he can barely recall now which people he handed the vests to in the frantic last moments of the Ehime Maru.
Yoshifusa Yamamoto is thankful for the voice that told him: "Go up! Go up!" after noises jolted him awake in his cabin.
Tetsuo Hama said he felt fortunate to have the courage to let go from the sinking ship and leap into the sea. He willed himself by yelling "let’s go!" and he was glad the man next to him did the same.
Syukuo Nakamura credits students for pulling him to safety.
Fumio Yogusuri doesn’t remember how he got to a lifeboat.
"I was so frightened," Yogusuri said. "I remember I was moved to the ocean by a big wave. I was in a lifeboat. I don’t remember how I got to the boat. I was saved."
They don’t understand why they were lucky while others were swept to sea or trapped in the ship.
But one by one, the weary crewmen made the same plea as Yogu-suri:
"I was saved," he said. "Please find the missing."
Interpreter Toshi Erikson contributed to this report.
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