![]() Meanwhile, the men inside HA-19 were struggling. The Ward attacked HA-20 with guns and depth charges, sinking the intruder. At 3:42 a.m., the minesweeper USS Condor (AMc-14) spotted a periscope, calling the destroyer USS Ward (DD-139) to the vicinity near the harbor entrance. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki and Chief Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki had a few hours to fix it before going into combat. The two-man crew of HA-19 had trouble from the start. This sub, along with four others, were tasked with sneaking into Pearl Harbor under the cover of darkness and firing their pair of torpedoes at American ships as the attack began. In the dark morning hours of December 7, 1941, Japanese submarine I-24 launched a Type A Kō-hyōteki-class midget submarine off the coast of O’ahu. Before hightailing it to shelter, I snapped a photo. I held it up to the horizon for my friends to see, showing the black outline of the hull in the waves, exactly matching up the shape of Rabbit Island and Kāohikaipu Island State Seabird Sanctuary in the background. I spent the next three minutes holding my cell phone up in the driving rain to get a signal to conjure up the wartime photo. “The Japanese two-man submarine at Pearl Harbor … it got lost. “This is the spot where that mini-sub came ashore.” They still had no idea. My friends, who are decidedly not WWII curators, looked at me bewildered. ![]() “Oh wow.” I turned to my companions, “Don’t you recognize this spot?” Looking up briefly to scan the coastline near Waimānalo Beach, I stopped dead in my tracks. ![]() We were thankfully headed toward the car. Due to careless planning, high winds, and heavy rains, our hike was most certainly a bust. ![]() It’s hard to be miserable in Hawaii, but I was close. Top Image courtesy of Cory Graff and the National Archives. ![]()
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