Ehime Maru victims' kin count down days to move

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Every day the widow does her best to wait patiently. To keep doubts at bay. To love her late husband through prayer.

Rockwater 2, normally used for oilfield exploration, already has proven it can handle the weight of the Ehime Maru. It lifted the ship's stern Wednesday and Friday to position cables after a rigging plan failed. Associated Press

But the U.S. Navy promised to recover their remains and return them to Japan, a pledge Chihoko Nishida has clung to for almost seven months.

Now her wait is nearly over.

Nine miles south of Diamond Head, Navy and civilian salvage experts are on the verge of moving the 830-ton Ehime Maru to shallow water, where divers can enter the ship and search for remains.

The Navy hopes to move the ship sometime in the next two weeks, preparations and weather permitting. If the $40 million mission is successful, it will be a precedent-setting feat of engineering. Nothing this heavy has ever been recovered from so great a depth.

But there are no guarantees.

The Navy isn't even sure how many remains are trapped inside the hull.

"I hope my husband's body is inside the ship," said Nishida, who will travel from Japan to Hawai'i when divers enter the Ehime Maru.

The Japanese Consulate in Honolulu does not know how many family members will come to Hawai'i. The Navy will pay for airfare and accommodations.

"It would be some consolation to know that I could see his body," Nishida said. "I'm telling myself that everything will be all right. I pray for him and tell him in front of a Buddhist altar every day: 'Wait for me. I'll see you in Hawai'i.' "

The salvage and recovery is being described as a humanitarian mission, but it also will help the Navy save face after it created an international incident. The Ehime Maru, a Japanese fisheries training vessel, was steaming out to sea Feb. 9 when it was rammed from below by the USS Greeneville during a surfacing drill.

The incident strained U.S.-Japan relations when it was discovered that the submarine had performed the drill for civilian guests. Not long afterward, the Navy said it would recover remains if it was technically feasible.

To lift and move the Ehime Maru 16 miles, the Navy is using a civilian ship, the Rockwater 2. The bright red and orange vessel, which is used for underwater oilfield exploration, cost the Navy $6.6 million. Since early August, engineers aboard Rockwater 2 have labored to prepare Ehime Maru for the move. The only way to do this is with the mechanical arms of remotely operated vehicles, high-tech marionettes dangled on 2,000 feet of cable.

Rockwater 2 already has proven it can lift the Ehime Maru. When part of the rigging plan failed, the ship was lifted by the stern Wednesday and Friday to position cables critical to the success of the project. Despite a broken lifting cable problem on Friday, the Navy is optimistic that its plan will work.

Last night, efforts were under way to lift the ship again.

Initially, the Navy had more doubts about the structural integrity of the Ehime Maru. Because it sits upright on the bottom, no one has seen how much damage was done to the hull by the Greeneville. But the ship sank in less than 10 minutes, so the Navy expects to see a large gash once the ship is lifted.

"It's not very likely that we could salvage the pieces if the ship breaks," said Rear Adm. William R. Klemm, deputy chief of staff for maintenance of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the man in charge of the salvage and recovery.

"The method that we're lifting the ship by is designed to hold the ship together," Klemm said. "If the ship fails, it's because there is damage beyond the scope of what we've estimated. That means the ship would probably be in multiple pieces."

When it starts, the move itself will generate a flotilla of escorts.

The USNS Sumner will be out front, using sophisticated sonar equipment to measure the currents and contours of the ocean bottom.

The Coast Guard cutters Kiska and Washington will enforce an off-limits safety zone a half mile in any direction of Rockwater 2.

Civilian craft hired by the Navy will be ready to skim diesel fuel or lubrication oil off the surface if either substance leaks from the Ehime Maru.

And picking up the rear will be the USS Salvor, which will follow the Ehime Maru through the eyes of a remotely operated vehicle that will recover any objects that fall off the fishing vessel.

With the Ehime Maru suspended about 90 feet off the ocean floor, the flotilla will move at 1 knot (1.1 mph), maybe less. After three days, the move will encounter its greatest challenge — an enormous underwater cliff. Here, with just more than a mile left in its journey, Rockwater 2 will have to lift the Ehime Maru 1,500 to 1,700 feet in a single, powerful engineering effort. The Navy hopes to set the ship down in 115 feet of water a mile south of the airport's reef runway.

It is here that the grim task of recovering remains will begin and end.

"Our mission is to recover nine missing crew members, and we will look stem to stern, top to bottom," said Cmdr. Rob Fink, commanding officer of the Navy divers.

His divers have been training for weeks, plotting routes into the wreck and familiarizing themselves with tools they may need to cut through blocked passages. But the toughest part of the job will come when they reach the remains. Fink said they have prepared for that.

"We've talked about the possibilities," he said. "We have had medical professionals come in and talk. We are down to the finest detail to ensure we are respecting the families of the victims."

No one knows what condition the remains will be in, especially after almost seven months at the bottom of the ocean.

"The actual condition of the remains, it's all speculation," Fink said.

But the grave of the Ehime Maru is a cold, dark place. A place where the weight of the ocean creates enough pressure to bend steel.

There are no real currents at this depth. Disturb the soft seabed, and it will take 45 minutes for the sediment to settle. The water temperature hovers around 40 degrees.

In March, the Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawai'i concluded that the low temperatures at 2,000 feet could help preserve remains, but also warned that "scavenging marine organisms" exist at that depth. For now, it said, the wreck is a reef where shrimp, crabs and fish stalk one another in a world of constant darkness.

The Navy estimates it will finish the job by October when it will move the Ehime Maru once more, releasing it to a 6,000-foot depth.

By then, Chihoko Nishida should be back in Oita Prefecture with her 13-year-old son. He understands his father's death, she said. And he prays each day at the family altar in their home.

"But he doesn't want to talk about it," she said. "So I don't talk about the Ehime Maru with other people in front of him. We'll be able to talk about it when the time comes."

Interpreter Toshi Erikson contributed to this report.