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Associated Press
TOKYO — Hours after returning home from Hawai‘i yesterday, the captain of the Japanese fishing vessel that was rammed and sunk by the USS Greeneville repeated his demand for an apology from the Navy submarine’s commander.
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| Hisao Onishi, captain of the Japanese vessel sunk by the USS Greeneville, arrives at the Osaka airport from Hawai‘i.
Kyodo News Service via Associated Press |
Looking tired and angry, Hisao Onishi told reporters that he was devastated to return to Japan without knowing what had become of the nine people from the Ehime Maru who are missing and presumed dead after the collision about nine miles south of O‘ahu more than two weeks ago.
"As the captain of the ship ... , it broke my heart to have to leave behind the missing," he said during a news conference in southwestern Japan.
Onishi demanded an apology from the Greeneville’s captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who has not made any public remarks in the aftermath of the collision.
The Japanese survivors and families of the victims have repeatedly called for some expression of contrition by Waddle, whose silence has become increasingly infuriating following revelations that civilian guests were at the controls of the U.S. sub at the time of the accident.
There were 35 people on board the Ehime Maru, a training vessel for high school students learning to become commercial fishermen, when it was hit by the Greeneville during an emergency surfacing maneuver. Four of the nine missing were students.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether the presence of 16 civilians on the U.S. sub caused mistakes that led to the accident.
Waddle is the subject of a formal Navy investigation, along with Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the submarine’s executive officer, and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, the officer of the deck at the time of the accident. The court of inquiry begins March 5 at Pearl Harbor. Waddle has been relieved of command.
The Washington Times reported yesterday that Capt. Bob Brandhuber, who was on board the sub as host to the civilians, also will be under scrutiny by the court at the request of his boss, the commander of the Pacific submarine force, Rear Adm. Albert Konetzni Jr.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to cool Japanese anger, Washington is sending a senior Navy admiral to Tokyo with a presidential letter and an apology for the sinking of the Ehime Maru.
Adm. William J. Fallon, the vice chief of naval operations, was named "special envoy to Japan" and will arrive in Tokyo with a letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
Believing that the bodies of the nine missing Japanese are trapped inside the Ehime Maru, Onishi and the families are pressing U.S. and Japanese authorities to salvage the vessel at all costs.
The U.S. Navy has sent deep-sea robots to the ocean floor 2,000 feet down to see if and how the 500-ton Ehime Maru can be raised.
The Ehime Maru belonged to a high school in Uwajima, about 430 miles southwest of Tokyo.
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