Two UH submersibles will return to the wreck site about mid-month ahead of a new season of dives.

The Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory found the intact submarine, its twin torpedoes still in their tubes, in 1,200 feet of water during tests and training dives last August. UH submersibles, Pisces IV and V, last visited the wreck site in December to film a Discovery Channel show.

"That's been sort of our highest-visibility project that we've done in a long time — probably ever — so, yes, we're always anxious to go back there," said John Wiltshire, acting director of UH's undersea lab.

Last year's discovery of the midget submarine was significant because it confirmed the accuracy of a report sent to naval command at 6:45 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, that a Japanese submarine was fired on trying to enter Pearl Harbor — raising anew questions about Hawai'i's preparedness for the aerial attack that came just over an hour later.

The historic find was called the most significant marine archeological discovery in the Pacific, but a year later it remains unclear whether the Japanese government will make a claim on the two-man submarine or release it to the United States, as officials here hope.

Efforts already are under way to protect the wreck five miles outside Pearl Harbor as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine sanctuary, national historic landmark or as part of the USS Arizona Memorial.

"The most important thing for us is to see it protected, No. 1," said Doug Lentz, superintendent for the USS Arizona Memorial. "Ideally, I'd like to see the park service in partnership with NOAA to manage the site."

Lentz said raising and preserving the 78-foot sub would cost millions, and an alternative would be to place video cameras underwater so images of the sunken vessel could be viewed at the Arizona Memorial visitors center.

"While you are standing in line for something you could look up and maybe we'd have a couple of different views of it and they would periodically change on the screen so you could see the front view, the side view, the back view," he said.

The UH training dives starting soon and running through early September are expected to include filming and more photographs of the upright submarine, but not the use of an endoscope to look inside, as previously considered.

"We have discussed that with the U.S. State Department, which is in charge of the whole project, and the State Department has asked us not to do that pending further discussions with the Japanese state department," Wiltshire said. "It's a military gravesite and there are a lot of sensitivities involved."

The Japanese Consulate in Honolulu yesterday said it would have to seek guidance from Tokyo before commenting on negotiations over the wreck.

With the discovery, the crew of the destroyer USS Ward was vindicated in its report that it had fired on and launched depth-charges at a Japanese submarine in the "defensive sea area." Its four-inch gun punched a hole through the sub's conning tower.

The Pisces IV and V crews will be training for dives focusing on fisheries habitats, coral beds and undersea volcano activity.